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- The word 'carriage' may also refer to a part of a typewriter or a lace-making machine
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 British English a railway carriage (also called a coach) is a railroad car designed and equipped for conveying passengers.
In American English, a baby carriage is a wheeled conveyance for reclining infants (British English 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.
History of carriages
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 and gilders, painters and 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.
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: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.
Carriage collections
- Nymphenburg
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
- Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York
- Coson Collection, Beechdale, Pennsylvania
- Versailles, the Grand Stables
- Carriage Museum of America
- Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
References
- Sallie Walrond, Looking at Carriages
- Arthur Ingram, Horse Drawn Vehicles since 1760 in Colour, Blanford Press 1977.
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"Carriage"