Thursday, March 29, 2007

Barnum & Bailey floats and tableaux #4


The beautiful carvings on this unidentified wagon suggest that it might contain a band organ.
The riders are attired in oriental garb.
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Posted by Buckles at 3/29/2007 06:24:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indeed, it did start as an organ wagon on W. C. Coup, then at the sale in 1882 likely went over to John Robinson. Somehow it ended up being converted into a tableau on Adam Forepaugh by 1891, the tall skyboards being made into a small tab. The latter went to Ringlings for 1891, became the chanedlier wagon, later rebuilt and served as the clown bandwagon, with the large circle on the side. The big tableau went from Forepaugh to Buffalo Bill's Wild West, 1895-1902, then transfered to B&B for the period 1902-1918. Both wagons likely ended up being sold to Christy and carved images from the clown bandwagon exist somewhere today, the only Coup wagon fragments in existence. Dahlinger covered the story of these two wagons in three stories in Bandwagon some time ago.

29 March, 2007 13:17

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