Founded by Marius Barbeau, the pioneer of French-Canadian decorative arts recognition, the Royal Ontario Museum's is the most significant collection of early French-Canadian furniture outside Quebec. Armoires, cradles, chairs, tables, desks, commodes, buffets, cupboards, chests, and room paneling are included. The furniture of New France reflected the styles and traditions of the earliest settlers' ancestral homes, Brittany and Normandy especially. Later British and American influences were most pronounced in urban centres. In rural towns and villages, French artisanship continued to the mid-19th century. By 1900, the tradition had been supplanted by the mass-produced furniture of mechanised factories. Rococo to Rustique looks at 200 years of French-Canadian furniture and surveys the social and historical context in which the furniture was produced, illustrated in part through watercolours from the museum's celebrated collection of Canadian heritage art. Born in New England, Donald Blake Webster was for many years curator emeritus in the Royal Ontario Museum's Department of World Cultures, a fellow of the Company of Military Historians, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and president emeritus of the National Portrait Gallery.
