A Crown of Feathers and a Fine, Blue-Nosed Horse

American Woman Riding Side-Saddle on the Road at Hommoku, Motomura, Yokohama, by Utagawa Hiroshige II (Japanese, 1829–1869). This woodblock print dates from 1861. It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who have generously made many of their public domain images free for anyone to use.

Art & Horseyculture: An American Beauty – and her Horse – in Yokohama, 1860

Here’s your thing of joy for today: the smirk on this rather saucy horse as he carries an American lady sidesaddle through nineteenth-century Japan, as viewed by artist Yoshitori Utagawa in 1860. Japanese women did not ride sidesaddle, so this is an interesting public performance of Western femininity as interpreted by a local. Also, one …

Whole Heap of Little Horse Links

I’m usually sceptical about “horses stolen for meat” stories (unless they come from Florida), but this one rings true. A Romanian has been arrested in connection with the theft of several draft horses in eastern France, allegedly for the slaughter trade. Some of the horses were already being raised for meat. (The Horse) The English …

Speed the Plough

Another day, another form of horse racing. This is Hokkaido, Japan, where the descendants of heavy European draught horses imported for agricultural work in the nineteenth century now fight it out in Ban-ei races. They drag an iron sled over a course of deep sand a couple of hundred yards long, and climb over ramps …