I’ve just published a chapter called “Inventing the Wild Horse: the Manmade History of the Takhi and Tarpan from 1828–2018” in Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity and the Making of the Modern Horse, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Routledge, 2020). I went overboard writing this and outstripped my word count so …
Category Archives: 1700s
Rapunzel Horses – the hot accessory of Early Modern Europe?
I’ve been reading beautifully illustrated books about horses all my life and in the last twelve years I’ve trawled all sorts of academic articles and image libraries, so it’s always delightful to find an image I’ve never seen before. The Palazzo Pitti in Florence just opened an exhibit called Leopoldo de’ Medici: Prince of the …
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Horses in Shining Armour – or Plate Mail Catsuits?
This eighteenth-century imagining of ancient Syrian horse armour seems bold, if a little impractical.
The Emininently Recyclable Horse
In The Age of the Horse I gave readers some idea of the ingenuity humans used to recycle the bodies of horses used in the nineteenth century west. Of course, this inventiveness was not restricted to the Victorian era nor to the more rapidly industrialised nations – and we’re still finding new uses for …
Beware of Fancy Mares
A “satyr” on women from the Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 November 1730, suggesting that they are created from various animals and elements including donkeys and foxes. The Mare with a flowing mane, which was never broke to any servile toil and labour, composed an eighth species of women. Those are they who have little regard for …
Dutch Stables: Horses in the Heart of Amsterdam
I went to Amsterdam last weekend to see friends I hadn’t seen for far too long, and ended up doing a little unscheduled horsey tourism. I hadn’t planned it, honest! I had no idea that Amsterdam had a nineteenth century riding manège right by its main park, nor that the building was still home to …
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My Little Pony, 18th Century-Style
It’s always fascinating to see which blog posts garner the most hits – which aspects of horses preoccupy people? One of my “surprise hits” is a slightly snarky post about horses with long manes and tails (often augmented with extensions that have to be stolen from some other horse) – something which has become a …
Peach Blossom, Trout and Tiger: Horse Colours in 1730s France
A list of horse coat colours taken from The School of Horsemanship by François Robichon de la Guérinière (first complete edition 1733. Translated by Tracey Boucher. Published by J A Allen, London, 1994): light bay chestnut bay black-brown golden bay dapple bay jet black rusty black dapple grey iron grey silver grey tiger (grey with …
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Fairy Ponies, Devils, Fireworks and Bullfight: Some 18th and 19th Century Circus Acts
Some randomly selected acts from eighteenth and nineteenth century equestrian circuses: “The LITTLE DEVILS, Masters Robinsons and Sutton, will leap from two Horses through a Hogshead suspended in the Air, by a Rope, and alight on the Saddles, the Hogsgead headed up with strong Paper; notwithstanding, the aforesaid Little Devils jump through it with such …
Genius Rides Out
From a great NYT feature on geniuses as children: After the English lawyer Daines Barrington examined the 8-year-old Mozart in 1764, he wrote: “He had a thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles of composition. He was also a great master of modulation, and his transitions from one key to another were excessively natural and judicious.” Yet, …