Informatica museologica, No. 45-46, 2015.
Professional paper
THE ORIGIN OF THE LANDAU CARRIAGE
Sonja Kirchhoffer
; Zagreb
Zoran Kirchhoffer
; Tehnički muzej, Zagreb
Abstract
The first part of the paper considers various hypotheses concerning the origin of the Landau carriage, which is generally characterised as a heavy coach drawn by a four-in-hand team. Then data are given about the course of development of the coach,
from which it can be seen that it was long present on the market, from the end of the 16th century to the beginnings of the 20th.
Because of its characteristics, described in the work, in the Victorian age it was a status symbol, popular not in Europe alone
but also in America. In the various sub-types, a rough division can be made into coaches meant for everyday use on one hand,
and luxurious or ceremonial on the other (for example, the Semi-State Landau and the State Landau). The Brijuni coach discussed belongs to the subtype with five windows (a five-glass Landau). During the restoration, also described, an endeavour was
made to arrive at information about the provenance of the coach. The most important data here are given on the chassis of the
carriage, an irreplaceable part, although it is not always certain whether the same workshop made the chassis and the body.
The axles of the Brijuni coach were made in the C. Wolf workshop in Saxony, a workshop that was in operation for an entire
century, because of which the coach can be only approximately dated, to the second half of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th
century. Thus Saxony is given as a possible place of its production, but it is also possible it was made somewhere else, Vienna,
for example, for one of the workshops of that place is mentioned on the fasteners of the folding heads. Inscriptions on objects
can give a number of data important in the identification of some object, which is particularly important if no written documents
are in existence, as in this case.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
176931
URI
Publication date:
2.9.2016.
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