Gypsy wagons have been around for a very long time, having primarily been seen with travelling circuses, before being adopted by gypsies.
The “Horse drawn, painted, one roomed house on wheels with a stove” is believed to originate in France in the early 19th Century. Gypsies themselves adopted them around 170 years ago. Its Romanesque characteristics, its baroque carvings and bright colours are likely to have been picked up from wanderings in Central and Eastern Europe.
The Gypsyes’ name for their wagons is a “Vardo”, from the Iranian name vurton, that means cart.
There were six main types of wagons and they were made of oak, ash, elm, walnut and pine. Most caravans were pulled by draft horses.
I’ve always been intrigued by Gypsies Wagons and in the past few weeks I built a couple of them. Inspiration come mainly from a coffee table book my wife gifted me, “Les Roulottes, une invitation au voyage”, a big source of colourful and funny caravans. It was very funny designing and building these caravans and also choose the right Minifigures from old sets and Collectionable Series.
If you are wondering why Jack Sparrow is in the MOC the answer is that I think he has the perfect look of a yesteryear Gypsy 🙂
Hope you like! Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks and credit to builders Karwik and Travis Brickle for inspiring me with their beautiful and top notch horse drawn carriages.
Mi hanno sempre affascinato e nelle ultime settimane ne ho costruiti un paio, complice anche un libro fotografico regalatomi da mia moglie: “Les Roulottes, une invitation au voyage”, fonte inesauribile d’ispirazione.
E’ stato molto divertente costruirli e scegliere le Minifigure adatte tra le collezionabili e quelle di vecchi set. Non stupitevi di vedere anche Jack Sparrow, ha un look da Gitano DOC.
credits: Norton74
