Design for 4 seat Phaeton, no top, no. 976
Medium
Pen and black ink, watercolor and gouache with gum arabic
Dimensions
sheet: 6 3/16 x 8 3/4 in. (15.7 x 22.2 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of William Brewster, 1923
Accession Number
23.112.1667
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate design drawing from Brewster & Co., one of America’s leading 19th-century carriage makers, captures the elegant lines of a four-seat phaeton intended for open-air travel. Created between 1850 and 1870, the sheet shows a lightweight, top-less carriage that reflects the period’s growing taste for sporty, personal vehicles suited to the smooth roads then appearing around cities and estates. Channing Britton’s hand is evident in the precise rendering, offering a glimpse into the collaborative process between draftsmen and manufacturers who turned such sketches into finely crafted con...
About the Artist
Brewster & Co.|Channing Britton
**Brewster & Co.** Brewster & Company, a premier American coachbuilder renowned for its exquisite carriage designs, was established in 1810 in New Haven, Connecticut, by James Brewster (1788–1866). Born in 1788, Brewster trained as a wagonmaker's apprentice starting at age 16 in Northampton, Massachusetts, before relocating to New Haven, where he set up his workshop and quickly gained acclaim for...