Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their EvolutionStraus, Ralph
History
Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution
Straus, Ralph
Carriages and carts
Stage-coaches, however, remained just as huge and just as gorgeous
as ever. They were built, more particularly in Italy, in the old
fashion—unenclosed and curtained. Count Gozzadini describes a State
coach built in 1629 for the marriage of Duke Edward Farnese with
the Lady Margaret of Tuscany, and as we shall see in a moment, this
differed only in the details of its ornamentation from the State coach
in which Lord Castlemaine made his public entry into Rome sixty years
later.
The body of the Farnese coach, says Gozzadini, “was lined with crimson
velvet and gold thread, and the woodwork covered with silver plates,
chased and embossed and perforated, in half relief. It could carry
eight persons, four on the seats attached to the doors, and four in the
back and front. The roof was supported by eight silver columns, on the
roof were eight silver vases, and unicorns’ heads and lilies in full
relief projected from the roof and ends of the body here and there. The
roof was composed of twenty sticks, converging from the edge to the
centre, which was crowned with a great rose with silver leaves on the
outside, and inside by the armorial bearings of the Princes of Tuscany
and Farnese held up by cupids. The curtains of the sides and back
of the coach were of crimson velvet, embroidered with silver lilies
with gold leaves. At the back and front of the coach-carriage were
statues of unicorns, surrounded by cupids and wreathed with lilies,
grouped round the standards from which the body was suspended; on
the tops of the standards were silver vases, with festoons of fruit,
and wraught in silver. In the front were also statues of Justice and
Mercy, supporting the coachman’s seat. The braces suspending the body
were of leather, covered with crimson velvet; the wheels and pole were
plated with polished silver. The whole was drawn by six horses, with
harness and trappings covered with velvet, embroidered with gold and
silver thread, and with silver buckles. It is said that twenty-five
excellent silversmiths worked at this coach for two years, and used up
25,000 ounces of silver; and that the work was superintended by two
master coachbuilders, one from Parma and the other from Piacenza.” Lord
Castlemaine’s procession into Rome contained three hundred and thirty
coaches, of which thirteen were his own property; and of these two were
State coaches. These likewise were not properly enclosed, and had no
glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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