CARRIAGE

:''The word 'carriage' may or may not also refer to a part of a typewriter, a shopping cart or a lace-making machine.''
Catherine II's carved, painted and gilded Coronation Coach (Hermitage Museum)

George VI and Queen Elizabeth in a landau with footmen and an outrider, Canada 1939

The classic definition of a 'carriage' is a four-wheeled horse drawn private passenger vehicle with leaf springs (elliptical springs in the 19th century) or leather strapping for suspension, whether light, smart and fast or large and comfortable. Compare the public conveyances stagecoach, charabanc, and omnibus.
A vehicle that is not sprung is a ''wagon''. An American buckboard or Conestoga wagon or "prairie schooner" was never taken for a carriage, but a ''waggonette'' was a pleasure vehicle, with lengthwise seats.
The word ''car'' meaning "wheeled vehicle", came from Norman French at the beginning of the 14th century; it was extended to cover ''automobile'' in 1896.
In the British Isles and many Commonwealth countries, a 'railway carriage' (also called a ''coach'') is a railroad car designed and equipped for transporting passengers.
In the United States, a 'baby carriage' is a wheeled conveyance for reclining infants (in English outside North America: ''perambulator'' or ''pram''), usually with a hood that can be adjusted to protect the baby from the sun.
In some parts of New England, a 'carriage' (or 'shopping carriage') is sometimes a shopping cart.

Contents
History of carriages
Types of horse-drawn carriages
Competitive driving
See also
Carriage collections
External links
References

History of carriages


A Gala Coupé, 17th Century; Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels

Some horsecarts found in Celtic graves show hints that their platform was suspended in a frame, elastically [1]. The Romans in the first centuries BC used sprung waggons for overland journeys [2]. With the decline of the antique civilizations these techniques almost disappeared.
Carriage at daylight in the traffic of Manhattan, New York, USA. (Photo: June 14, 2007)

In the Middle Ages all travellers who were not walking rode, save the elderly and the infirm. A trip in an unsprung cart over unpaved roads was not lightly undertaken. Closed carriages began to be more widely used by the upper classes in the 16th century. In 1601 a short-lived law was passed in England banning the use of carriages by men, it being considered effeminate. Better sprung vehicles were developed in the 17th century. New lighter and more fashionably varied conveyances, with fanciful new names, began to compete with one another from the mid-18th century. Coachbuilders cooperated with carvers, gilders, painters, lacquerworkers, glazers and upholsterers to produce not just the family's state coach for weddings and funerals but light, smart fast comfortable vehicles for pleasure riding and display.
In British and French coaches, the coachman drove from a raised coachbox at the front. In Spain the driver continued to ride one of the horses, as also in the 1939 state visit procession in Canada (''illustration, left'').
From the 1860s, few rich Europeans continued to use their posting coaches for long-distance travel: a first-class railway carriage was the faster modern alternative. Then, in the 1890s, just as automobiles came into use, "coaching" became an upper-class sport in Britain and America, where gentlemen would take the reins of the kinds of large vehicles of types generally driven by a professional coachman.

Types of horse-drawn carriages


An almost bewildering variety of horse-drawn carriages existed. Arthur Ingram's ''Horse Drawn Vehicles since 1760 in Colour'' lists 325 types with a short description of each. By the early 19th century one's choice of carriage was only in part based on practicality and performance; it was also a status statement and subject to changing fashions. The types of carriage included the following:
In Vienna, rentable landaus called ''fiacres'' carry tourists around the old city.


Barouche
Berlin
Brake
Britzka
Brougham
Buggy
Cabriolet
Calash
Cape cart
Cariole
Carryall
Chaise
Chariot
Clarence
Coach

Coupé
Croydon
Curricle
Dogcart
Dos-à-dos
Drag (carriage)
Dray
Droshky (Drozhki)
Fiacre
Fly
Four-in-hand
Gharry
Gig
Gladstone
Hackney

Hansom
Herdic
Jaunting car
Landau
Limousine
Mail coach
One-horse carriage
Park Drag
Phaeton
Post chaise
Randem
Ratha
Road Coach
Rockaway
Spider phaeton

Stagecoach
Stanhope
Sulky
Surrey
Tarantass (Tarantas)
Telega
Tilbury
Trap
Victoria
Village cart
Vis-à-vis
Voiturette
Whim
Whiskey

The names of many have now been relegated to obscurity but some have been adopted to describe automotive car body styles: ''coupé,'' ''victoria,'' ''Brougham,'' ''landau'' and ''landaulet'', ''cabriolet,'' (giving us our ''cab''), ''phaeton,'' and ''limousine''— all once denoted particular models of carriages.

Competitive driving


In most European and English-speaking countries, show driving is a competitive equestrian sport. Many shows host driving competitions for a particular breed of horse or type of carriage.
Other competitors compete in the all-around test of driving: Combined driving also known as Horse Driving Trials is an equestrian discipline regulated by the FEI (Federation Equestre Internationale) and with National Federations representing each member country.
World Championships take place on alternate years, including Single Horse Championships, Horse Pairs Championships and Four-in-Hand Championships as well as the Four-in-Hand competition at the World Equestrian Games, held every four years.
For pony drivers, the World Combined Pony Championships are held every two years and include singles, pairs and four-in-hand.

See also



Harness

Driving (horse)

Carriage collections



Austin Carriage Museum

National Coach Museum (''Museu dos Coches'') in Lisbon (Portugal)

Nymphenburg Palace in Munich (Germany)

Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Austria)


Illustrated descriptions of some of the carriages

★ Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York


The Long Island Museum

★ Coson Collection, Beechdale, Pennsylvania

Versailles, the Grand Stables


The Versailles Stables

Carriage Museum of America, Lexington, Kentucky


★ Offers an extensive research library on the subject of animal-drawn vehicles.


www.carriagemuseumlibrary.org

Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

Mossman Collection, Luton

Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan

External links



Driving for Pleasure by Francis Underhill, 1896 A comprehensive overview, with photographs of horse drawn carriages in use at the turn of the nineteenth century. Full text free to read, with free full text search.

References


1. Raimund Karl: Überlegungen zum Verkehr in der eisenzeitlichen Keltiké = Deliberations on Traffic in the Ironage Celtic Culture (Dissertation in German, PDF)
2. Rekonstructions of a Roman travelling waggon and of a waggon from the Hallstadt bronze culture (in German)


★ Sallie Walrond, ''Looking at Carriages''

★ Arthur Ingram, ''Horse Drawn Vehicles since 1760 in Colour'', Blanford Press 1977.

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