Cotsen 22849

An elegant, low-slung coach drawn by a matched pair of stylish young gentlemen for an afternoon ride through the park?  This enormous plate (24 x 29 cm.) comes from Les enfans parisiens: Jeux, exercice et amusements (Paris: Aubert & cie, ca. 1850].

Cotsen 34396

If you have to have fresh air no matter what the weather, this is the sleigh for you.  Graf Franz von Pocci designed this sleek, minimal vehicle for an illustration to a poem in his Lustige gesellschaft: Bilderbuch von Fr. Pocci (Munich: Braun & Schneider, 1867).

Cotsen 52644

Something with more power?  These simian charioteers were dreamed up by Jacobus Wilhelmus Adrianus Hilverdink for Jan Schnkman’s Het nieuwe apenspel (Amsterdam: G. Theodore Bom, 1862).

Cotsen 15288

There’s always the reliable old bicycle.  It’s not fast or flashy, but it can take you where you want to go.  Florence Upton drew this image of a little girl polishing up her big brother’s bike for her mother’s Little Hearts (London, Manchester, New York: George Routledge and Sons, Limited, 1897), several years before she scored an enormous hit with the Golliwog series.

All these pictures of vehicles were chosen to illustrate the theme of transportation in the nineteenth-century volumes of the Cotsen catalogue.