The Slower Road

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, here’s a special-order Studebaker Tandem Cart:

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I came across yet another treasure in the CAA’s library: a small (just 5 by 7 inches) catalog of “fine carriages & spring passenger wagons” by the Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co.

The catalog isn’t dated, but the library card stored with it in the filing cabinet where I found it says that it’s from 1896.

It’s filled with lovely, but fairly typical, black-and-white images of carriages. Each type, variety, and style has a name, a catalog number, specifications, a drawing (like this)

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… and, amusingly to us now, a unique “telegraph code.” Some of these; Lilac, Lovely, Quartz and, my favorite, Prune.

Carriage names and drawings like these are a huge help in trying to identify carriage types, or even just in learning what made one type different from another and how to tell all the varieties apart.

The real treasure in this catalog, though, are the full-color illustrations of some of Studebaker’s special-order vehicles. These were all painted by the prolific turn-of-the-century magazine illustrator, C. Gray-Parker. And they’re gorgeous.

Six of these will be featured in the March issue of The Carriage Journal, but I’m going to share four others with you here over the next few days.

First, here’s a special-order Studebaker Hunting Trap …

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