Baby Carriage vis-à-vis

Description

The Historisches Museum Basel has a comparatively large collection of children’s conveyances. The oldest one in the collection is this elegant and finely made baby carriage that once belonged to the Merian-Paravicini family and later to the Alioth-Merians, resident at St. Alban-Vorstadt 82 in Basel. The technical details of the chassis allow it to be dated to the 1780s.
The carriage was built to be pulled by hand. The children of well-to-do families were taken out for an airing in carriages like this one, pulled along by the nursemaid or house boy. The two seats are arranged vis-à-vis so that the children would be facing each other. As the carriage has no doors – the lines painted on the sides create only an optical illusion of doors – the children had to be lifted in and out of the carriage. The body of the carriage sits on through-braces made of wrought iron which are suspended from the C-springs by buckled leather straps. The sides are topped by an arcade of interlocking arches. The black, button-tufted upholstery consisting of a fixed backrest and loose seat cushions is covered with an early form of jute-backed imitation leather. The foot box is lined with a precursor of linoleum along the sides.