The Punt Chair, designed by Elaine Fortin, is on display at a new exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, Canadian Modern. This exhibition explores Canada’s innovation and lasting contributions to modern design and craft.
Canadian Modern showcases one hundred examples of culturally significant, limited-edition, and mass-produced objects designed and crafted in Canada, and the stories of insight, experimentation, and innovation behind them.
French-Canadian designer Elaine Fortin drew inspiration from the intuitive intelligence of rural boat builders. Boat builders use the natural curves of juniper trees to create the structural ribs of their punts (small wooden fishing boats). Using this same method, she designed the Punt Chair. Each chair holds the memory of those who use it and carries forward the history of the tree used to make it and a centuries-old knowledge of outport woodworking, ingenuity, and boatbuilding heritage.
Canadian Modern places an important ROM collection front and centre, and offers an engaging lens through which to examine and appreciate Canada's unique place in the modern design and craft movement.