Description

 This is an early bicycle diploma for a club in Himberg, a town south of Vienna dated with 1907 in a stamp.

The diploma was made by an artist from the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna’s Workshops). The group was founded in 1903 by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann. It evolved from the Vienna Secession involving artist and designers of different branches, with the British Arts and Crafts Movement as an example.

The images of the bicycle parade and the competition in pairs includes female cyclists.

Cycling as a female sport and exercise did not start developing until mid 1890s, when alongside with development of female emancipation and suffragettes, who saw a bicycle as one of the symbols of female liberation.

Articles and books of the time, on the other hand, saw female riding a bicycle as damaging for health and highly immoral because of the biking pants, which were more suitable for biking as fashionable long skirts, but resembled female underwear.

The first female circus performers on bicycles started appearing around 1900. The first female bicycle performance in the United States was made in 1902 at the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus, after their tour of Europe, where they encountered similar circus acts.