Among the most personalized forms of nineteenth-century woodcarvings are small-scale vignettes of everyday life, many of which feature horse-drawn conveyances of one type or another. Usually created in household settings, they are all the more engaging for their intimate associations with childhood and family. Depending upon the carver's skill and sense of humor, the results varied from the realistic to the highly inventive. In this case, a self-taught artist has created an elongated horse of improbable dimensions pulling a sleigh. The horse is stylized further with a mane that is incised into its neck, a cropped tail, and short legs with well-formed hooves. The carver paid particular attention to the sleigh, an accurate construction with delicate runners and stays, while he rendered its stocky driver in a more suggestive fashion.

The piece was most likely made as a toy but could have served some other purpose. It may once have been part of a larger grouping, as some carvers frequently created individualized works that expressed their personal worldviews. One of the best-known examples of this is a group of about forty figures and vignettes by a different carver which is believed to have been displayed in a Vermont store around 1910 as a panorama of American life.

Ralph Sessions, "Horse-Drawn Sleigh and Driver," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 554.