Carriage Clocks

The mechanical carriage clock has been around for more than 300 years. Its history began around 1600, when driving in luxuriously equipped carriages began to flourish.

Among demanding watch collectors, the baroque carriage clock is particularly well known.  It gives the impression of a heavily oversized pocket watch. It often weighs more than two pounds and its dial can have a diameter of up to six inches. Due to its size, it is more solid, more accurate, and easier to read than the smaller pocket watch. As a rule, the carriage clock was also protected by a leather or reptile skin-covered case with small holes so as not to dampen the chime too much.

Early carriage clocks had a nice special feature: a string with which the striking mechanism can be activated. This meant that the time could be learned at any time, even in the dark.
The repeating chime then sounds the quarter of an hour and the number of whole hours. There was also an alarm function.

Such carriage clocks, also called saddle or alcove clocks, were carried in closed touring carriages. Some carriages had a hook inside the padded box from which the clock could be hung. However, this was only possible on the “new style” roads. In the eighteenth century, many overland roads were in such poor conditions that the carriages along with the passengers and their luggage were shaken hard.

The preserved carriage clocks of the eighteenth century, many of them were created in Bavaria, are now pure collectors items and cost several thousand dollars. A little cheaper are the so called “carriage clocks” from the time after 1800, which are called carriage clocks, but are actually travel clocks with alarm clocks. Their simple, pretty metal cases were covered with leather for travel.

Some carriage clocks from that time period had a display of the moon and sun phases, which could be triggered with a pressure lever. An alternative to the mechanical clock was the folding sundial with built-in compass.

Watches of English coaches and German course carriages.

The Royal Mail coaches of England were the first in the eighteenth century to depart to the minute and follow the specified timetable. They arrived so precisely that the church clocks of the respective places were set based on them, not vice versa. The guard was equipped with a robust pocket watch, which he carried well protected in his leather shoulder bag. The coachman had to keep checking with the guard about the time on the fast ride in the coach. Contemporary paintings show scenes of the coachman turning back to the guard (or conductor).

Exact time became even more important after 1850 with the disappearance of postal carriage routes due to the new railways. A proper coachmen now had a leather bag which was described like this: two straps, one around the neck, the other around the body, a pocket on the inside to store the travel papers, on the outside a container to be closed with a brass fastener, in which the watch was locked.

Carriage Clocks around 1900
In the nineteenth century, a clock continued to be part of the luxurious interior of a closed carriage. At this time, open carriage were also equipped with them. Another innovation was the use of clocks mounted on the stemming board in special protective housing or on the spray leather so the self-driving whips* and sports ladies could easily read the time.

Overview around 1900, the following types of carriage clocks existed:   

1. Clocks for closed carriages & private coaches mainly as part of the toilet bag attached to the front wall.

2. Clocks in the metal cases for large sport carriages and coaches - on the footboard.

3. Clocks in the leather cases for attaching to the dash leather (dash board).

4. Clocks in fixed cases (set in leather on fabric) on hunting carriages.

Carriage clocks from 1890 to 1920 can sometimes hardly be distinguished from boat clocks and early automobile from the same time period.

Side note: Clock are back on carriages again, this time they are used for timing in a CDE (Combined Driving Events), a Pace drive, or any other timed event in carriage driving competitions.

* “Whip” is the title given to the driver of  someone who is driving their own carriage (as opposed to having a coachman driving drive their carriage).

Timetable bag from around 1900 from the guard of a road coach named "The Venture".  Recessed clock on the back and square key on the front side.

Silver carriage clock with alarm function and periodic chime from around 1736.  Lizard skin case has sound holes and surrounds the 5 inch clock., which weigh approximately 3.3 pounds.

Watch case which can be mounted on the dashboard of a vehicle. A leather case of this type can be reproduced by a bag maker, and a pocket watch of this size is easy to find.







Submitted by Priscilla Rose, aka "Sleigh Gal"

Test your Knowledge: A Queen Victoria Quiz

Think you know all about Queen Victoria?  Try this trivia quiz, created by member Rosita Rose.  Answers are below.  No peeking!

QUESTIONS

1.  When was Victoria born and what was her birth name?               2.  Who are her parents?
3.  When was Victoria the queen?
4.  How did she become queen?
5.  What influence did her mother hold over her?
6.  Who did she marry?
7.  How many children did she have?
8.  When did Prince Albert die?
9.  What disease did Victoria carry?
10  How is Victoria related to Queen Elizabeth?
11. Did Victoria have any male companions after Albert died?

Right, earliest known photo of Victoria taken 1845

ADDITIONAL INTERESTING FACTS

 

*Victoria was barely five feet tall.                                                                                                   
*Victoria was the first monarch to ride a train.
*Victoria proposed to Albert.  He could not propose to her as she was the Queen.
*Victoria started the trend of wearing a white wedding dress. No one else was allowed to wear white at the wedding, and her dress pattern was destroyed so it could not be copied.
*There were six assassination attempts on Victoria's life.
*Victoria spoke several languages: English, German,  French, Italian and Latin.
*Victoria was called "The Grandmother of Europe", as her children married into various European monarchies.  She had 42 grandchildren!
*Victoria was the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace.

ANSWERS

1.  Victoria was born on May 24, 1819.  Her birth name was Alexandrina Victoria.

2.  Her father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who was the fourth son of King George III.  Her mother was Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

3.  Victoria became queen on June 20, 1837 at the age of 18, and reigned until her death on January 22, 1901. Her coronation took place on June 28, 1838 at Westminster Abbey.

4.  Victoria was born 5th in line:  1.  Grandfather King George died in 1820.  2. Father Duke Edward died in 1820.  3.  Uncle Duke of York George IV died in 1827.   4.  Uncle King William IV died in 1837.   5.  Victoria was crowned in 1837.  She was just 18, and did not require a Regent to rule.

5.   The Regency Act of 1830 made a provision for the Duchess of Kent (Victoria's mother) to act as regent in case the King died while Victoria was still a minor.  King William distrusted the Duchess to be Rregent, and in 1836 he stated that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a Regency could be avoided.  The Duchess was very controlling, and between her and her financial advisor John Conroy, schemed to make Victoria look incompetent, so they could take over as Regents.  Victoria was strong and banished him from court, and by the time she married Albert, they had no further control over her.

6.  Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  her first cousin, who was the son of her uncle Leopold, her mother's brother.  The were married February 10, 1840.  They were both 20 years old.  Painting:  Marriage of Victoria and Albert, by George Hayter.

7.  Victoria and Albert had nine children:

i. Victoria, Princess Royal.  ii.  Edward VII, Prince of Wales, who became her successor.  

iii. Princess Alice.  iv. Prince Alfred  v. Princess Helena vi. Princess Louise vii. Prince Arthur

viii. Prince Leopold  ix.  Princess Beatrice.

1946 Family painting showing Prince Alfred, Prince Edward, The Queen and Prince Albert; Princesses Alice, Helena and Victoria.

8.  Prince Albert died December 14, 1861 of typhoid fever. Victoria entered a state of mourning and wore black for the rest of her life. She mourned him for 40 years.  She avoided public appearances, and rarely set foot in London in the following years. She earned the nickname "Widow of Windsor".

9. Victoria was a carrier of Hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder that is passed along maternal lines, also known as the Royal Curse.  Two of her five daughters (Alice and Beatrice) were also carriers, and her son Prince Leopold suffered from it.  Her most famous descendant with the disease was Alexei Nikolaevich, son of Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia.  (Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, and granddaughter of Queen Victoria, whose mother was Princess Alice).  The entire Russian family was executed in 1917 during the revolution.

10.  Victoria is Queen Elizabeth's great great grandmother:
       Queen Victoria - Edward VII - George V - George VI - Elizabeth

11.  In the 1860s, Victoria relied on a servant from Scotland, Mr. John Brown. There were rumors of a romantic connection and the Queen was referred to as "Mrs. Brown" The story of their relationship was made into a movie in 1997 called "Mrs. Brown". 

In 1887, she became friends with another servant, Abdul Karim.  He was accused by the public of spying on the British, but the Queen did not believe these rumors. He remained in her service until her death in 1901, when he returned to India.  There was also a movie made about this relationship in 2017, called "Victoria and Abdul".
    

Victorian "Photoshop": Portrait Manipulation

Almost as soon as photography was perfected for use by the general public, artists and others began to manipulate the images. Beginning with daguerrotypes, photographers used double exposures to create humorous effects.  Photographers combined images from different negatives to create novelty photos.  The headless ones were extremely popular.  Photographers and retouching specialists would  scrape their film with knives, draw or paint on top of it.

"Spirit" photography used multiple exposures to depict the subject with ghostly presences in the same image.

 

 "Spirit" photograph, by John K. Hallowell, Chicago, Illinois. Supposedly taken during a seance, actually a double exposure or composite of superimposed cutouts, showing a woman with head-and-shoulders portraits of men and women around her head.   Image: Library of Congress

Portrait Photography

Oh, those lovely, creamy smooth complexions of the Victorian era.   But were they really?   Today, in order to give our own selfies a peaches and cream glow, we often use an application in our cell phones, such as a "soften face" feature.

In the 1800s, "the dominant photographic print at this time was called the albumen silver print, and was produced by coating paper with a mixture of egg whites and salt, and dipping it into silver nitrate. The paper was then placed in contact with the negative and exposed to light. Before printing their photographs, photographers would use pencils to manually scratch touch-ups onto the negatives themselves. They developed a variety of scratch techniques either to shade or highlight their images—for example, they’d use a fine-pointed pencil to add highlights, or a blunt pencil and “cross-hatching” technique to brighten up parts of the face". Smithsonian.   The actual negatives  looked pretty strange. People’s faces appeared scratched, cracked, or pockmarked, depending on the photographer’s technique. But the scratches didn’t appear in the final print. Instead, the small scratches showed up as a cheek-bone defining shadow or a healthy glow—creating with a pencil some of the same effects today’s photo editors are achieving digitally.

 

Below, the cabinet card on the left shows a nice, glowing face.  On the right, modern scanning and enlarging shows the small, white dots and lines used to highlight and smooth.

Photographer Tony Richards owns several old plates that were used to make albumen prints in the mid-to-late 1800s.  Richards found that the plates have  “pencil marks” on the emulsion side — the retouchers permanently scratched their edits into the original glass plates. The woman above and below are two examples showing the white pencil lines and dots, which may fill in lines, cover spots, or add highlights.  Photographer Link

 The Wasp Waist

What about photos of those poor women who supposedly laced themselves so tightly they broke ribs, redistributed their internal organs or fainted dead away?  So many of these photos used manipulation, such as the infamous painted triangles. Look closely at the below portraits.  You can see the poorly executed waist-whittling techniques used by the photographer.  These are all painted in at the waist.  Why, even Queen Maud wasn't averse to a little touch up here!

Right, a close up of her painted in waist.

               

Left, Queen Maud and King Haakon VII of Norway when they were still Prince Carl of Denmark and Princess Maud of Wales.  1890s.












Yes, a tiny waist was desirable, but only a small number of women did extreme corseting.  The Empress Elizabeth of Austria (tall at 5'8" and an average of 110 pounds) was obsessed with dieting, exercise and tight-lacing. From 1862 until her death in 1898, her clothing measured 18 1/2 – 19 1/2 inches around the waist, which prompted the Prince of Hesse to describe her as “almost inhumanly slender”.

 The average Victorian corseted waist measurements varied between 23 to 31 inches. Larger corsets of 32-36 inches and above were also available. 

A small waist is also a visual illusion.  Women would cinch their waists in while they padded their hips and the side lines of the bust to make themselves look as much like an hourglass as possible.

The Retouching Desk

"The central frame held a piece of glass onto which the negative was placed. Attached to the base, an adjustable mirror or piece of white cardstock reflected light up through the negative. An overhanging piece of wood—sometimes accompanied by built-in side curtains or a piece of fabric thrown over the whole contraption—prevented light from shining on the negative from above. The retoucher was told to set up the retouching desk in front of a north-facing window, as light from the north “is the least variable,” according to one 1898 retouching guide. Most retouching took place on the film side of a negative-the one covered with the photographic emulsion.

Image credits: The book of photography; practical, theoretical and applied, via Archive.org // Public Domain

To lighten small sections of the negative, the retoucher would use a sharp blade to shave away the dark film, little by little, thus subduing the highlight in the final print."

Jocelyn Sears for Mental Floss

In conclusion, an 1881 book titled  "The Art and Practice of Silver Painting" give us great advice that is useful today about going overboard on retouching:
“An old man without wrinkles is an unnatural and ghastly object—the ‘marble brow’ of the poet should be left to literature.”    "It is very wrong to touch out all the character in the face of your otherwise fine ‘old sea-captain.’”

Submitted by Shenandoah Rose

Punch Magazine Fashion Cartoons

Punch magazine was published between 1841 and 2002.  One of the best features of Punch was the cartoons, full of great satire from 100-150 years ago, not only about Fashion, but on Domestic & Foreign Affairs, Culture, Art, Society, and Science & Technology.  I'd like to share some of my fashion favorites.


The Hourglass Lady.   A cartoon by Linley Sambourne drawn in 1877, shows a woman with the new form fitting, hourglass silhouette.  The photo on the right is Author Edith Wharton, circa 1877.
 
       

















Veto.   "Shall we - a - sit down?" "I'd like to; but my dressmaker says I musn't!"    Drawn by George DuMauier in the late 1870s.  This lovely ruffled and pleated train was painted by James Tissot of the same era.       
 
       














   

"The Chatelaine: A Really Useful Present" Cartoon from Punch, 1849 By John Leech

Copy reads "Oh, look! Ma' dear;  see what a love of a chatelaine Edward has given me."   A chatelaine is a decorative belt hook or clasp worn at the waist with a series of chains suspended from it. Each chain is mounted with useful household appendages such as scissors, thimbles, watches, keys, vinaigrette, and household seals.

 

 

















The "Extinction" of Species, or "the fashion plate lady without mercy and the egrets."   At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of birds were being killed in order to provide feathers to decorate women's hats. The fashion craze, which began in the 1870s, became so widespread that by 1886 birds were being killed for the millinery trade at a rate of five million a year; many species faced extinction as a result.  The most popular plumes came from various species of egret, known as "little snowies" for their snowy-white feathers; even more prized were the "nuptial plumes", grown during the mating season and displayed by birds during courtship. On March 14, 1903, President Roosevelt established Pelican Island as the first national wildlife refuge in the United States to protect egrets and other birds from extinction by plume hunters.    Source         
                       

                      




A satirical cartoon showing a woman/snail with her shell as a bustle, by artist Linley Sambourne.  I love how the others on the beach stop to stare at this fashionable creature.
 

Right is the painting  "On the Shores of Bognor Regis" by A. M. Rossi, 1887.






During the 19^th century, there was no such thing as a holiday from fashion.  Seaside resorts in England—whether in Brighton, Bournemouth, or Burnham-on-Sea—were as much a place to flaunt one’s style as London itself during the season.








Punch did a series of cartoons about women's desires to wear designs based on Nature.  Here are a few:

 One of the most satirized items of women's apparel was the crinoline, or cage hoop.  The fashion was so popular that Punch nicknamed the crinoline craze 'Crinolinemania'.

Not only were they drawn in farce, they also made stereoscopic cards showing women dressing with large, exaggerated cage hoops. BELOW: In 1860, The London Stereoscopic Company produced the Comic Series ‘scene from a ladies dressing room, preparing for the crinoline’.  Source

Stereoscopic cards for a viewer. (Think of it as a Victorian ViewMaster!)

Submitted by:  Shenandoah Rose