Greetings and welcome to another photographic meander through a bit of my world. Yes, it’s mine, mine all mine! No, not really. Actually this little corner belongs to Ivo Šarlingr, a man who dreamed of opening his own museum and filling it with his collection of motorcycles. This is his dream fulfilled.
Museum of Motorcycles: Fulfilled Dream
Yes, that’s actually the name of the museum. It’s tucked just off the main road through Pavlíkov, a town in the Czech Republic. You walk into a garage on the ground floor of a residential home and are met by a confounding collection. A kind woman steps out from behind the little window in the wall that marks the ticket counter and helpfully points the way and explains which stairs at the back to go up or around to find several rooms in a couple different buildings.
The paths branch out from this large room packed floor to ceiling with a bewildering and fantastic display of old farm implements, lathes, drill presses, bicycles, lamps, kitchen ware, ice skates ...
Several rooms are packed with motorcycles.
Models from many different countries
Crazy displays packed with bric-a-brac. An airplane turbine? Ah, nine cylinder, rotary airplane motor identified by keefer55 in the comments.
The little sign on the front fender of this tiny ochre scooter reads “Do you know what this is?” Apparently it’s a mystery vehicle.
Wonderfully detailed
If you have any idea who built this mystery vehicle and what it’s supposed to be, let me know. I’ll pass on the information to the museum.
Here’s an American model for you. This is an Indian 1000 Powerplus from 1918
The Henderson K De-luxe from 1923, made in Detroit, Michigan USA— lots of American bikes in this collection, don’t think I saw a single Harley.
The Henderson was so beautifully detailed and restored that I thought you might appreciate a closer look
The Bekamo TX 123 made in 1924 by Kachlert & Rappe, Rumburk, Czechoslovakia
What’s this? A room packed with dolls, doll carriages, doll houses and tons of other toys, games and children’s books? Yes, indeed.
Back to the greasy stuff
One of the pearls of the collection. This is an ABL. It’s model number 13 from 1936. This is an example of Czech ingenuity, a motorcycle built from the ground up, a few parts taken from other bikes, but the rest is all custom made, one of a kind. Antonin Böhm from Libeznice (thus ABL), who also worked in a local motorcycle factory, made thirteen of these fantastic creations. After WW II these sort of cobbled together bikes sprouted up all over the place. The communist era of austerity was a creative one.
Laurin & Klement TB from — well, 1900-1902 sometime. When the earliest motorcycles were truly just bicycles with motors strapped to them.
Thanks for stopping by.
This is an open thread.