MODERN CARRIAGES. 395 



the times we live and move in, and another establishment, the 

 Institute of British Carriage Manufacturers, had to be founded 

 about six years ago on a popular basis, where all the officers 

 have to undergo an election every year at the annual meeting. 

 It has already done a large amount of work that ought to have 

 been done by the chartered company, which holds ample funds 

 for trade purposes. 



* It may here be mentioned that in one of the rooms of the 

 offices of the royal mews at Berlin formerly occupied by General 

 Willison, Master of the Horse to the late Emperor Frederick 

 William, there was a first-rate collection of about eighty oil 

 paintings of royal carriages of various countries, with their 

 horses and harness, &c. The collection is, in many respects, 

 a valuable one, and it is to be hoped it may be long preserved, 

 where it may be seen and admired by Englishmen visiting the 

 now important capital of the German Empire. 



About fifteen years ago the Science and Art Department 

 at South Kensington, through the British Foreign Office and 

 British ambassadors in foreign capitals, made an excellent 

 collection of photographs of the ancient state carriages of the 

 sovereigns of Europe. The photographs are now the pro- 

 perty of the Coachmakers' Company of London. They were 

 shown at South Kensington in 1873, at Liverpool in 1886, and 

 at Newcastle in 1887. The Institute of British Carriage Manu- 

 facturers (having its head-quarters at the New Town Hall, 

 Westminster) possesses a unique collection of illustrations of 

 ancient carriages, including working designs prepared, some 

 200 years ago, for a former Duke of Saxe-Coburg, an ancestor 

 of the late Prince Consort. 



In relation to carriages, heraldry plays a somewhat impor- 

 tant part in indicating ownership, pictorially and by signs and 

 emblems, sometimes historical, and often otherwise interesting. 

 But its use is much diminished with the reduction of the 

 number of dress and state carriages now kept. At the present 

 day the art of monogram designing and painting gives almost 

 as much employment as heraldic drawing and painting. 



