Jacques and Hay

Jacques and Hay was a 19th-century furniture manufacturer in Toronto, Canada, in 1872 to be renamed Robert Hay and Company and later still to become Charles Rogers and Sons Company.[1] In its heyday it was colloquially known as "jakesenhay".[2]

History

Co-founded in 1835 by John Jacques (then a journeyman cabinetmaker from England) and Robert Hay (a journeyman cabinetmaker from Scotland),[3][1][4] originally the company started as just one small shop in Toronto, which Jacques and Hay had bought from Jacques' then boss, William Maxwell;[4] but it expanded over the next several decades, in keeping with a regional boom in furniture manufacturing in the middle of the 19th century.[1]

The firm had a large plant in Toronto by the 1850s, which had an annual production of (among other things) 1,000 beds and 15,000 Windsor chairs, which were sold by outlets in several towns in the province of Ontario that the firm opened that decade.[1] At the same time, the company had expanded its supply of raw materials with a timber plant at New Lowell (now part of the town of Clearview) and had industrialized its manufacturing at the Toronto factory to include multiple steam powered machines, including a jig saw, a belt sander, power planers, a multiple-drilling machine, a moulding machine, and twenty circular saws.[1] It was the largest factory of its kind in British America in 1864.[5]

The firm was by that time also employing marketing tactics such as manufacturing bespoke furniture for Albert Edward, the then Prince of Wales, and his retinue on his 1860 royal tour of several cities in the province.[1] These marketing stunts proved to be ineffectual in the longer term, however.[1] The firm lacked product catalogues, faced competition from other firms with lower production costs (such as not needing to ship lumber by rail from New Lowell to Toronto), and after that initial burst of mechanization in the 1850s failed to keep up with further advances in machinery from the 1860s onwards.[6]

The firm changed to Robert Hay and Company in 1872 when Jacques retired, Charles Rogers and George Craig then becoming partners with Hay.[7] Rogers, born in Glasgow in 1816, had immigrated to Canada in 1851, joining the firm as a carver; and Craig, also born in Glasgow but in 1819, had earlier immigrated to Canada in 1842 and joined the firm as a machinist.[7]

Eventually, as Charles Rogers and Sons Company, the firm dissolved in 1922.[8]

References
  1. Forster 1996, p. 163.
  2. Bloomfield & Bloomfield 1987.
  3. Johnson 1968, p. 263.
  4. Kealey 1991, p. 19.
  5. Lerner & Williamson 1991, p. 291.
  6. Forster 1996, pp. 163–164.
  7. Robinson 1885, p. 385.
  8. Forster 1996, pp. 164.

Reference bibliography
  • Forster, Ben (1996). "Finding the right size: Markets and competition in mid- and late- nineteenth-century Ontario". In Hall, Roger; Westfall, William; Sefton MacDowell, Laurel (eds.). Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History. Dundurn. ISBN 9781554882649.
  • Lerner, Loren Ruth; Williamson, Mary F. (1991). Art Et Architecture Au Canada. Art and Architecture in Canada: A Bibliography and Guide to the Literature to 1981. Vol. 1. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802058560.
  • Robinson, C. Blackett (1885). History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario: pt. 1. Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson.
  • Johnson, J. Keith, ed. (1968). "Hay, Robert". The Canadian Directory of Parliament, 1867–1967. Queen's Printer.
  • Kealey, Gregory S. (1991). "Toronto's industrial revolution". Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 1867–1892. Reprints in Canadian history. Vol. 247. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802068835.
  • Bloomfield, Elizabeth; Bloomfield, Gerald (1987-01-01). "Mills, Factories and Craftshops of Ontario, 1870: A Machine-Readable Source for Material Historians". Material Culture Review. 25.

Further reading
  • "Jacques and Hay's Cabinet Factory". Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufacturers of Upper Canada. 2: 193–196. July 1864.
  • Dunning, Phil (November 1974). "The Jacques and Hay Styles: Canadian Cabinet Makers and Victorian Style". Canadian Antiquities Collector. 9 (6): 14–17.
  • Radforth, Ian (1989). "Managing Jacques and Hay's New Lowell operations, 1853–1873". In Baskerville, Peter Allan (ed.). Canadian Papers in Business History. Vol. 1. Public History Group, University of Victoria. ISBN 9780921278023.
  • Cathcart, Ruth (1986). Jacques & Hay: 19th Century Toronto Furniture Makers. Boston Mills Press. ISBN 9780919783294.
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