DESIGN – an album of 47 illustrations of carriages. Paris, c. 1880-1900.

DESIGN – an album of 47 illustrations of carriages. Paris, c. 1880-1900.

An album of hand-colored lithographs depicting luxury carriages and sledges, one in watercolor. The designs here were reproduced in the periodical Le Guide du carrossier et les équipages à Paris, Revue de la construction des voitures et des automobiles, published by Brice Thomas at the turn of the nineteenth century. Designs for decadent carriages had been a part of festival culture since the early modern period, and often appeared illustrated in accounts of major feasts alongside the floats, fireworks displays, and elaborate table settings that characterized those events. This album records the final gasps of this culture before the onset of the personal automobile. One of the lithographs is signed “L. Lagard”

Oblong album (267 x 360mm). 47 illustrations (c.139 x 246mm) mounted on card, 46 hand-colored lithographs and one watercolor, some heightened in gold and silver (some spotting and staining to edges of mounts, occasional light offsetting). Repurposed 19th-century half morocco album with label on upper board “Album of Photographs” (upper board detaching, some loss to spine).