Coupé

Coupé – omnibus, is a passenger and luggage travelling vehicle, for a four-horse team in a collar harness, consisting of two parts: the front, which is a coupé for the owners, and the rear, a four-person omnibus for the servants. The vehicle also has a luggage boot on the roof. Made in HOFWAGENFABRIK H.Gläser, Dresden, it once belonged to the Saxon princes of the Wettin family, whose coats of arms are visible on the handles. Purchased by the Castle Museum in Łańcut for the Museum Vehicle Collection, it underwent a thorough renovation in the renowned company run by the Bogajewicz family in Pniewy Szamotulskie, operating in the years 1890–2015. The front coupé has a wooden closed box typical for these coaches with doors in the side walls, with drop-down windows on the belts and with two windows in the front wall and a two-seater upholstered seat inside. The coach has a box coachman profiled seat, with holders for two lanterns on both sides, and a hand brake crank on the right side; it is also equipped with a front mudguard in black leather on a frame. The rear, omnibus, section of the vehicle described, immediately adjacent to the rear wall of the coupé , has the form of a rectangular box with two windows in each side wall, and a door in the rear wall with a drop-down window in front of which, at the footrest, there is a single wrought-iron step. On the edges of the roof above the two sections - coupé and omnibus – a black lacquered forged gallery is attached, forming a luggage boot, but without, as it is the case in the Łańcut omnibus, a fixed ladder used to carry and place the trunks on the roof. The interior of the omnibus box has two suspended, upholstered, two-seater benches along the walls, under which small trunks could be placed, along the driving direction. Aldona Cholewianka-Kruszyńska