First of all, please forgive any English mistakes in this blog! Altough I am not confident writting in this language, I will try my best to present this amazing photos gallery rare coach models. By this way it is a challenge for me to introduce José Cardoso Brito and his art.
During a long time, when he was a little boy...he constructed very small ship models.
Suddenly, one day during a visit of our Coach Museum at Lisbon (internationally known as a very rare museum in the World) he decided to build miniatures of those vehicles. The most important difficulty was to find plans...where? Unfortunately there were not available anywhere!
He solved the problem choosing one coach in exhibition. Then after the the public visit time and patiently day after day he took a lot of photos using a small digital camera...at least he got himself the measures of all parts of the car previously chosen to convert in 1/10 scale (metric system used)
José Brito in his workshop
(at home)
In this english version It is not my intention to do an historic relation between each model and its past! Why? Of course you can ask...well in my opinion the target of this blog it is not "to talk" about Portuguese History (indeed very rich) that probably annoying you, my friend modellers. Instead modelling is our interest. Agrees with me?! And if I write less and show more pictures,probably your amusement is garanteed.
In this very special modelling type you can appreciate carving, coating pieces with gold...yes (fine gold pellicle) work upholstery. The dimensions of all pieces are very small. José Brito is a champion of creativity and he suffered immensely to get appropriate materials for this unusual task. In major occasions our artist constructed moving parts, as doors opening and closing as well windows and steps of the small stirrups.
Simply I pickup the major of these pictures not in good conditions but I made my best...
Gallery
Advertisement: The majority of the photos can be amplified! If you whish to do that put the cursor over the words " To Amplify" and click in your left button of the mouse. To return, it needs to click again, but now on the little arrow upside in the right corner of your monitor.
Inside in one of the rooms at Museum
Please, now appreciate the details of this model
A very rare reproduction (the real coach
of Don Filipe 1º
King of Portugal during 1580 and 1598)
Crown Coach
This coach was a royal power symbol. Constructed in the beginning of XVIII century. Let us go to take a look of several photos of the model. Excellent!
Please, first open the door and put the down the articulate steps...
Back of the coach.
Dona Maria Francisca de Saboia, one of our queens owns this majestic coach. Wonderful, gold and more gold!
This queen owns this one too.
Now, a vehicle more modern, this post carriage.(starting at 1797)
More recently this carriage was in duty of the first Republic President of Portugal (Doctor Manuel Arriaga 1911-1915) after the follow down of Monarchy.
Observe the accessory pieces not yet finished in a one work table.
Terrible! The last king of Portugal was killed during a trip in this coach. After this sad incident the Republic took the place of Monarchy!
Not yet finished, but you can see these two photos...
This collection it is small, but it will be to continue slowly, I finish by now this description . It is not a good bye ...sure my intention, probably as soon as possible, to improve and put more information and more photos in this BLOG .
I am very grateful to José Cardoso Brito josecardosobrito@hotmail.com , he gave
me this opportunity to show some nice models.
Octávio Oliveira oliveira.octavio@sapo.pt
