The European Sedan Chair: a brief history
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| Pius V, Pope 1566-1572, printed 1568, Germany |
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The Sedia Gestatoria and the carrying chair was the local transport of the Pope and heads of state in the 16th century. The canopied carrying chair became popular in Naples and Genoa in the last quarter of the 16th century. These developed more widely into the enclosed (close) or covered chair and hand litters of the early 1600s.
The Sedan, a glass-windowed, cloth-lined close chair or litter developed in London during the early 1630s, and given the name according to Henry Peacham (1576-1644) after the Principality of Sedan on the Meuse, an important centre of Protestant faith and cloth manufacture on the North European mainland. The term sedan and chair became combined by the 18th century and in the late 19th and 20th centuries came to be used to describe all hand-carried transport with a seated occupant. Some countries like France continued to use the earlier terms chaise a porteur(s) and the Spanish silla de manos to also describe the new sedan chair. In Italy portantina replaced seggiola, whilst in Germany Saenfte was also used to describe mule-litters.
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| A Modern Belle going to the Rooms at Bath, by James Gillray (1756-1815), published 1796 by Hannah Humphrey, London |
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The glass-windowed sedans were first available for public hire from October 1634 in London and by the late 18th century more than 2,000 vehicles were available to hire in over 37 cities/towns across Great Britain and Ireland. Design lavishness reached its zenith in the period 1745-1775 when there were tens of thousands in use across Europe. Today probably only 1,300 of these survive.
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