Design in Canada: Fifty Years from Teakettles to Task Chairs

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Remember Melmac? Or those linked seats in the doctor’s office? Or your
mother’s Fat Albert lamp? Someone designed those. Here’s the
scoop—the who, when, where, and (sometimes) why of such designs in
furniture, household items, and textiles as they appeared in Canada in
the last half-century.

The book, which includes five essays, masses of photos, extensive cut
lines and product notes as well as biographies and corporate histories,
covers style movements (modernism, pop, postmodernism, pluralism),
materials (plastics, aluminum, laminates, fabrics, ceramics, glass,
plywood), and designers (Thomas Lamb, Fred Moffatt, Karim Rashid, Jan
Kuypers, Hugh Spencer, John Tyson, and hundreds more). Chrome dome tea
kettles, tub chairs, teak stereos, the Comtempra telephone, Depression
glass, and even the stacking chairs from the school gym are among the
once-taken-for-granted objects documented in this tour of an era in
Canadian design that was rich in creativity.