"The self-taught designer Walter Nugent shook up the Canadian furniture industry in the sixties with his patented design for a one-piece chair seat and back that is supported internally with tempered steel rod. He launched a company to produce various models of the chair, won two NIDC awards and earned major contracts across Canada.

Nugent attended Oakwood Collegiate in Toronto and served as an air force navigator during the Second World War. He became interested in design while working at the advertising agency McConnell Eastman, prompting a visit to Denmark. In 1957 he developed a prototype for a sprung steel chair. Two years later, Walter and his brother Doug, along with a private investor, founded Walter Nugent Designs in Oakville, Ontario, and Eaton's placed a significant order for the chair. 

The chair design, in various guises, eventually won three awards, two from the NIDC. An evolutionary high-back model (#68), patented for hospital use, won an award in 1968 from the Ontario chapter of the Association of Canadian Industrial Designers.

Doug took over managing the business in 1968 to allow Walter to focus exclusively on design. In 1971 Walter's final design for the firm (#99) was for a plywood birch lathe-turned table and matching chair (without its customary steel core). Following disputes with investors, he left the company in 1973, although it continued to produce chairs until it closed in 1976. George Powers, who worked for the company between 1972 and 1974, founded Avenger Design, Oakville, Ontario, in 1976. His 1973 design for the Avenger stacking chair, which exposed its sprung steel interior, won a Trillium award."