Jacques and Hay was a 19th-century furniture manufacturer in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Canada, in 1872 to be renamed Robert Hay and Company and later still to become Charles Rogers and Sons Company. In its heyday it was colloquially known as "jakesenhay".

History

Co-founded in 1835 by John Jacques (then a journeyman cabinetmaker from England) and Robert Hay (a journeyman cabinetmaker from Scotland), originally the company started as just one small shop in Toronto, which Jacques and Hay had bought from Jacques' then boss, William Maxwell; but it expanded over the next several decades, in keeping with a regional boom in furniture manufacturing in the middle of the 19th century. 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 chair A Windsor chair is a chair built with a solid wooden seat into which the chair-back and legs are round- tenoned, or pushed into drilled holes, in contrast to standard chairs (whose back legs and back uprights are continuous). The seats of Windsor ...

s, which were sold by outlets in several towns in the province of

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

that the firm opened that decade. 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 power A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

ed machines, including a jig saw, a

belt sander A belt sander or strip sander is a sander used in shaping and finishing wood and other materials. It consists of an electric motor that turns a pair of drums on which a continuous loop of sandpaper is mounted. Belt sanders may be handheld and mo ...

, power planers, a multiple-drilling machine, a moulding machine, and twenty

circular saw A circular saw is a power-saw using a toothed or abrasive disc or blade to cut different materials using a rotary motion spinning around an arbor. A hole saw and ring saw also use a rotary motion but are different from a circular saw. ''Cir ...

s. It was the largest factory of its kind in

British America British America comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, which became the British Empire after the 1707 union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, in the Americas from 16 ...

in 1864. The firm was by that time also employing marketing tactics such as manufacturing bespoke furniture for Albert Edward, the then

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

, and his retinue on his 1860 royal tour of several cities in the province. These marketing stunts proved to be ineffectual in the longer term, however. 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. The firm changed to Robert Hay and Company in 1872 when Jacques retired, Charles Rogers and George Craig then becoming partners with Hay. Rogers, born in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

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

References

Reference bibliography

* * * * * *

History

References

Reference bibliography

Further reading