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that piebald and skewbald were only below white horses in prestige. In addition to these two colour types, there was the beasant or bausan

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Gautier goes on the describe the beasant and bausan as

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as a horse of any colour with white face and feet

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I believe RHC Davis described that type of horse as one with any color having white spots but I have yet to tighten down dates on these terms.

This sight has been an amazing education on the separate genes that go into spotted, splashed, pied and skewbald colorations. http://hagen.let.rug.nl/kim/kleur.html
which some might find interesting.

I have also found a wonderful Dutch painting that caused the local ECW mounted group to rethink their stance on leopard spotted horses: http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o938.html

I'm working my way further back on this, I will eventually get it documented back through the 14th century.

Brenna

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In Gladitz's "Horse Breeding in the Medieval World" (1996) he starts out in the Far East on page 37 he is talking about the Chinese acquiring horses that

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"already bore marks identifying their previous 'barbarian' ownership. The administration responsible for the region containing the breeding statio was transferred before the middle of the 8th century [AD] from Bishbalik to Turfan. (note 108) There are two registers of the end of the 7th or beginning of the 8th century recording details of the sex, age, colour, and markings including brand and ear marks, of 79 horses of the postal service; in effect a relay service. Of those that were marked with 'barbarian characters' in addition to their Chinese mark, the horses described as having 'white patches' may not have been 'pied' but 'chubary'.(note 109) The skin of horses that have the marking classified by Crew and Buchanan Smith as 'chubary' is spotted as in tiger spotting, but the black color predominates over the pink. The coat is marked on the croup with irregular indefinitely outlined blurred white areas. When the marking is highly developed the croup is white with round dark spots. At the other extreme the white areas on the croup are reduced in size and may disappear altogether. In coats where that occurs gray hairs form irregular and somewhat less distinct spots over the rest of the body. The basic coat color varies. The marking is depicted in clay horses excavated from an 8th century cemetary near Astana, about 35 miles/56.325 km. east of the Kona-shahr of Turfan.

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We were in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts this past weekend. In the static Chinese exhibit there was a beautiful scroll painted on silk that showed a group of horsemen and one of them was riding what looked like an appaloosa with a "blanket" on its rump.

Don't know how much it helps.

For example, he decides that a Rouncey "must be" the medieval equivalent of a cob, without any explanation of why this must be the case, and then works out what a Rouncy would be used for based on this assumption.

Read it, and make up your own mind - he does have some useful stuff, it just shouldn't be accepted uncritically.

Alternatively, if you have a problem getting hold of it (I think it may be out of print), I can fax you the relevant pages.

In the Middle East, the sabino gene (which is a type of "pinto" or "paint" coloration) occured occassionally in the Arabian horse and is depicted in art. The sabino gene is still present in the modern Clydesdale and sometimes you see the piebald patterning in modern Shire horses. They are the type preferred as the drum horse of the Household Cavalry Bands.

The Kladruber has an all over leopard spot pattern but everything I can find on the horse as a breed puts them late 17th and early 18th century in development. Paintings of the Lippizan horses in the 18th century show coats of both "pinto" and "appaloosa" type--the solid white was a later development and it's not considered a lucky year at the Piber stud farm if at least one chestnut Lippizan is not born there. There are Dutch horses with a similar coloration in paintings from the mid-17th century. I have also seen some references to Hungarian horses of the 16th century with spots and striped hooves but I have yet to find that in art depictions.

The horses of the New World (especially the ones that went feral and were later re-domesticated by the Native Americans) had to certainly carried the coloration genes with them from the Old World (primarily Spain. I think there is some good indication of that being a logical train of thought in that the number of color variations in the Lippizans as they very heavily influenced by the Andalusian. But again, this is 17th and 18th century.

Icelandic ponies have a number of color types, including "pinto" and they are very unchanged since the 10th and 11th century. They were also definitely European horses but they are an isolated gene pool in an island population that did not mix back into the European horse community.

What I'm trying to do is find some solid documentation of it occuring in Europe from the 11th to the end of the 15th century. It's a personal and passionate quest, but any help is appreciated.

Brenna

[ 12-31-2001: Message edited by: Brenna ]

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Brenna, you may want to consult Gladitz's book. If you haven't read it already (it is a bit dry) but he does offer color tables in the back of his book regarding the registers and I believe that they date from at least 13th c. Europe though his primary focus seems to be the east.

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Horse Breeding in the Medieval World by Charles Gladitz, 1997