The art, architecture and furniture of Ontario's Mennonite settlers reflected the deep convictions of these law-abiding, profoundly religious and pacifist people.

Among the earliest settlers of Ontario's Niagara and York County regions, Mennonites brought to Canada a long rural tradition of building, furniture making and folk art. These ideas inspired the houses and farms they built and the production of a great variety of furniture, and informed the emergence of a style rooted in Germany and Pennsylvania, but clearly modified by the Ontario experience.

Mennonite Furniture is a well-illustrated examination of an unmistakable nineteenth century Ontario style of domestic construction and ornament.

LYNDA NYKOR is a free-lance journalist who lives in Thornhill, Ontario.

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PATRICIA MUSSON is professor at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.

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Martha Kuehner's profile page

"When Mennonites arrived in Upper Canada to settle near Niagara and in Waterloo and York counties, they began to make furniture that retained the basic Germanic shape and spirit and also showed its contact with other cultures, particularly the American culture."

London Free Press