Posted 4 years ago
K8tttt
(1 item)
I don't know anything about saddles so wondered if anyone knows anything about this antique saddle? I haven't seen floral print like this before. It's beautiful!
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Hi, K8tttt. :-)
Cool. So long as I don't have to ride side saddle, that is. Oh my aching back. Not to mention the poor horse.
Upholstered side saddles were not uncommon in the 19th century and earlier.
Here's another one:
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Here is an antique side saddle with unattached stirrup and a horse whip. This was once a beauty but has been well used. Has a beautiful brown/orange floral velvet-like seat.
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https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-side-saddle-stirrup-horse-478529032
Apparently even the famous Annie Oakley rode side saddle:
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Buffalo Bill’s Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley rode aside, as in this picture, performing “…horseback tricks from a sidesaddle, a contraption with a flat seat, on which the rider sat sideways, and a thick, leather-covered hook, which the rider used to anchor herself by her leg to the horse’s back,” wrote Glenda Riley, in The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley. She also took advantage of the sidesaddle, Riley added. When Oakley dangled off the side of her horse to pick up a hat off the ground, she appeared as if “she floated on the horse’s back.”
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https://truewestmagazine.com/the-scandalous-saddle/
Why would more ordinary people want to use such a contraption?:
(From the same source)
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As absurd as this may sound, the sidesaddle took hold in the 14th century to protect the virginity of a teenaged princess traveling across Europe to wed the young King of England.
Surprised? Don’t feel alone. Most assume the sidesaddle was the natural outcome of fashion, demanded by the long, flowing, sometimes over-hooped skirts favored for so many centuries.
But no, protecting the royal hymen was the reason.
For some 500 years, women were told the only way a “proper lady” sat on a horse was sideways, holding on for dear life, a passenger on a 1,500-pound animal she could barely control.
The fate of that princess makes the story even more ludicrous.
Virtuous Virgins
Princess Anne of Bohemia, a predecessor of the modern Czech Republic, was the daughter of the most powerful monarch in Europe in 1382 when she left for England to wed King Richard II. To ensure her virgin marriage, ruling men instructed her to ride aside, rather than astride.
“Good Queen Anne,” as she’d eventually be called, arrived sitting in a large padded chair, holding onto a pommel in front, both feet resting on a wooden plank that hung on the left side of the animal. (Both men and women mount a horse from the left.) Someone led her horse.
She wed a tall, handsome boy she came to love, but who history remembers mainly through William Shakespeare, the playwright who blamed “Richard II” for the Wars of the Roses.
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Not all women rode side saddle, however:
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Women such as Diane de Poitiers (mistress to Henry II of France) and Marie Antoinette were known to ride astride. Catherine the Great of Russia went so far as to commission a portrait showing her riding astride wearing a male officer's uniform.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidesaddle
In Catherine the Great's case, I suspect it might have been political. The German-born princess had usurped her native Russian husband's imperial throne.
She was much more popular than he was (which is the reason she was able to usurp the throne), but even with that, she might have thought that she needed to show she was 'fit' to rule in her own right.