1. BibliOdysseyB o o k s ~ ~ I l l u s t r a t i o n s ~ ~ S c i e n c e ~ ~ H i s t o r y ~ ~ V i s u a l M a t e r i a O b s c u r a ~ ~ E c l e c t i c
B o o k a r t .
W e d n e s d a y , N o v e m b e r 1 9 , 2 0 0 8
Board Games
Five Centuries of Board Games
Filosofia cortesana de Alonso de Barros
Etching/engraving made by Mario Cartaro in Venice in 1588. The game squares,
numbering up to 63, lead to the ships sailing in the centre of the board on the 'sea

2. of suffering'.
Il novo bello et piacevole gioco della scimia
(The new beautiful and enjoyable game of apes)
Etching published by Altiero Gatti in 1588 featuring numerous monkeys displaying
human characteristics.

3. Il novo et piacevol gioco del giardin d'amore
(The new and enjoyable game of the garden of love)
Published by Giovanni Antonio de Paoli in the 1590s, the board features two rows
of game squares, the outer one displaying the virtues and the one closer to the
central garden with game numbers on pairs of dice.

4. Il nuovo et piacevole gioco dell ocha
(The new and enjoyable game of the goose)
Engraving published by Lucchino Gargano in 1598 with the game rules in the
centre and pictures of fools in each corner.

5. Nuovo et Piacevole Gioco detto il Barone
(?The baron's new and pleasant game)
Anonymous woodcut printed board game from the second half of the 16th century,
featuring a rustic military figure in the centre carrying a flag inscribed "Capitano di
Baroni".

6. Il Nuovo et Piacevole Giuoco del Biribisse
(The new and pleasant game of biribisse)
Etching published by Giovanni Giacomo de' Rossi between 1640 and 1690. The
game board has numbered pictorial compartments of animals, objects and
characters, repeated in smaller equivalent squares below the rules of the game.

7. Il gioco del aquila
(The game of the eagle)
Etching print made by Giuseppe Maria Mitelli in the 1680s. The Imperial Eagle,
surrounded by medallions depicting commanders, holds chains in its talons
attached to defeated Turks.

8. Zuogh dal cacciator
(? [..] hunters)
Another Giuseppe Maria Mitelli print, dated 1699. There are eleven bird hunting
scenes depicted.
Mitelli was an innovative and wonderful graphic artist - definitely go
see: one , two &three at Giornale Nuovo and the previous entry on BibliOdyssey;
they are all well worth seeing.

9. Karten Lotterie Spiel
(Lottery tickets)
Johann Trautner made this print between about 1700 and 1710. The circular game-
board has three concentric rings, each divided into 32 compartments: the outer
ring contains instructions; the next ring shows pictorial representations of playing
cards which appear in their regular form in the inner ring, all surrounding a central
domestic scene.

10. Game of the Goose
Simplistic spiral arrangement of game squares in an anonymous board produced in
the 1700s.

11. Il Dilettevole Gioco del' Oca
(The Delightful Game of the Goose)
Anonymous 18th century board game print from Bologna with corner drawings of
(what appear to be) Commedia dell'Arte figures and a central couple eyeing the
goose hungrily. As with the majority of the goose games, this board has sixty three
numbered playing fields.

12. Il novo e piacevole gioco del pela il chiu
(known as: 'pluck the owl')
Humans and owls make up the majority of figures in the four concentric rings
surrounding a crowned owl atop a 'triple six' of dice. The inscription language
suggests the creator of this anonymous 18th century print comes from the north
east of Italy and it may have been published in Parma by Giovanni Battista
Panzera. The 't' and the 'p' below the compartmented figures refer to the number of
quattrini ('q') that a player was awarded or had to pay out. Evidently it was a
popular game: prints were still being published well into the 19th century.
Generally speaking, people purchased their games as prints on paper and fastened
them to a board or a hard surface in their own home (ie. this was the case for the
majority of game boards: it's obviously cheaper to buy them unmounted)

13. Jagd-Spiel
(Game of the hunt)
Published by Johann Raab in Nuremberg in the late 18th century, this print is
described in the notes as a hand-coloured lithograph. I think it's more likely a
woodblock print, given the fairly unsophisticated quality and the fact that
lithography was only invented in 1796. *shrug*

14. Le Nouveau jeu de la marine
(The new navy game)
[spliced together - poorly - from two aberrant halves]
Hand-coloured etching from the 1790s filled with nautical terms and associated
illustrations. Perhaps the British ship in the central scene could be sunk at the end
of the game? I can't quite read the rules.

15. Grand jeu du nouveau testament avec 120 figures
(Great game of the New Testament with 120 figures)
I recall this etching from 1800 was accompanied by two other similarly 'busy'
sections and the complete print appears to offer three different games in the single
layout. Nothing evokes the prospect of commercial success quite like the
combination of religion, education and gambling.

16. "The New Game of Emulation designed for
The Amusement of Youth of Both Sexes and
calculated to inspire their minds with an
Abhorrance of Vice and a Love of Virtue"
Linen-backed, hand-coloured etching, published by John Harris in London in
1804. Circular game-board with 66 numbered pictorial compartments, some
illustrating moral scenes, the last compartment showing an angel.

17. Musical Toy
Etching published by John Hatchard and John Harris in 1811. Circular game board
with lines of musical notation, divided into 12 segments, with scales in the centre.

18. Neues Bilder Lotterie Spiel
(New picture lottery)
Anonymous print from about 1810 to 1820. Game-board with 80 pictorial
compartments, arranged in 8 rows of 10, depicting flowers, animals characters and
various objects, with instructions beneath.

19. Le Jeu de Paris en Miniature
Game board etching published in 1815 by Veuve Chéreau. Features ninety
numbered pictorial compartments, each depicting a shop sign in Paris, with a
literal interpretation of its name, a description of what it sells and its address; the
winning square is 'Au Retour d'Astrée'; in the centre the rules.

20. Het Stoomboots Spel
(The steamboat game)
Dutch design published in Paris by A. Daane between 1810 and 1825. The covering
of the paddle wheel bears the steamboat's name or the cities between which it
operated, 'Rotterdam en Dort.' (Dort or Dordt is the informal name of the city of
Dordrecht).

21. The Swan of Elegance -
A New Game Designed for the Instruction and Amuseument of Youth
John Harris published this linen-backed, hand-coloured etching in 1814. Each of
the game board's compartment shows a child engaged in a moral or an immoral
deed. A twelve page rulebook had four lines of verse explaining each scene. The
medaliions in each corner represent Apollo, Minerva, Wisdom and Genius.

22. The Noble Game of the Swan
Another linen-backed etching - presumably for the children of the elite - from 1821,
published in London by William Darton. The nineteen compartments of the swan
game board includes the British Museum (No. 3). The game board came complete
with a rule book, an etching of some swans and a slip case.

23. "The Noble Game of the Elephant and Castle or Travelling in Asia Combining
Amusement and Instruction for Youth of Both Sexes. A hand-coloured etching and
engraving mounted on linen showing an elephant with scenes of Asia on his
Howdah and trappings -- 19½in. (50cm.) by 15½in. (40cm.) in original slip case
with coloured label showing an elephant under a palm tree, published by William
Darton, 58 Holborn Hill 1822" [source: sold for £1,645]

24. Der Bergbau
(The Working of Mines)
Hand-coloured lithograph, pasted onto marbled board from the mid-1800s. Game-
board showing a cross-section of a mine and the network of tunnels leading down
from 6 buildings, along the tunnels, various numbers which represent ore.
Accompanied by 5 of an original 6 tokens in the form of miners, a rule sheet and an
oblong box in which are small squares of glass, possibly originally used as counters.
Kept in an embossed box with gold margins and bearing a printed label with an
illustraion of a mine and the title in German, and beneath the lower margin, in
French and English.

25. Die Steckenpferd Galloppade
(? The galloping hobbyhorse)
Game-board print by Johann Benedikt Wunder from the 19th century with 60
numbered compartments arranged in a spiral. Several compartments show various
scenes, and a number of compartments show a hobby horse; the central
compartment shows Minerva pointing at a folly (?), figures in each corner: top left,
a child on a hobby horse waving a sword, top right an old man on a hobby horse
also waving a sword, bottom right, a man with a searchlight, bottom left, a fool.

26. Kunst und Glück
(Art and happiness)
19th century anonymous game board etching with 16 compartments, numbered
from 3 - 18, numbers 3 to 16 showing literary characters arranged in a square, with
two larger central compartments, showing Dlle Sonntag and Signor Paganini.
Accompanied by a letterpress rule sheet in French and German.

27. Giuoco dell' Oca
(Game of the Goose)
An 1872 Italian lithograph published by Lebrun-Boldetti & co with a goose in each
corner in a compromising position.

28. Il Vero Giuoco della Barca
(The True Game of the Boat)
Anonymous late 19th century game board lithograph of two sailors in a boat within
a ring bearing numbers and shellfish. There are putti in each corner of the board
and letterpress instructions beneath

29. A New Game - Russia versus Turkey
Hand-coloured anonymous etching published in Paris (for the Englsh market)
between 1875 and 1895. The folding game-board has 55 numbered compartments
(numbered both forwards and in reverse) arranged in two rough spirals of water,
each emanating from a port - the Turkish port on the left and the Russian on the
right, with associated ships, harbours, forts and sandbanks.

30. The Ranks to Field Marshall
First World War board game with portraits of George V and Field Marshals French
and Kitchener. Anonymous artist. Manufactured in Britain as a process print on a
board.

31. Manga sugoroku
(Manga board game)
Print artist Okamoto Ippei's colour lithograph from 1929 featured as a supplement
to the Japanese magazine, 'Shufu no Tomo' (Housewife's Friend). The board game
(purports to) illustrate the life choices of a young modern woman.

32. Jagd auf Kohlenklau
(Hunt the Coal Thief)
Very rare propaganda board game print published by Lepthian-Schiffers in the
1930s that sought to promote economy in the use of raw materials in Germany.

33. German print - game-board
Untitled anti-British World War II propaganda shipping race board game
published by F Westenberger in about 1940.

34. British print - game-board
Anonymous and untitled, this lithograph was published in the 1940s*. Notably
absent from the curator's notes are the terms 'anti-German' and 'propaganda'. Just
an observation.
*Brett points out in the comments that the figures depicted in this game print date
to WWI and not WWII - the British Museum are changing their notes.
[click on any image to go direct to the largest version]
Except where noted, all these board game prints were sourced from the British
Museum Prints Database (search on "game-board" in the free text area towards the
bottom and tick the images box - there are several hundred images available)
All the captions above are quoted or were derived from the curator's notes at the
British Museum site.

35. -----------------------
I'm not a historian although I did start a history course (incomplete) some years
ago. I remember reading a book about the industrial revolution and was impressed
with the author's research. Specifically, I recall that in assessing the impact of
industrialisation on the quality of life in childhood they included a copy of a shire
pharmacy ledger that listed sales of medicines.
The quantities of laudanum (heroin derivative) sold over a given period of time was
staggering. But the really impressive aspect - just in terms of smart thinking - was
that the author showed that the graph of sales of the drug correlated fairly well with
the infant mortality rate. Destitute people found it cheaper to spend what little they
had on a 'medicine' to quieten their starving children rather than buying them food.
Something like two out of every three kids didn't make it to the age of five years
(that's surely inaccurate but it's in the ballpark range).
[Later: this was not fact-checked and is, at best, only partly true: read the comments.]
That little memory came back to me while I was trawling through these board game
prints because, like the pharmacy ledger, the prints seem to me to contain a wealth
of indirect evidence about things like customs and social status and attitudes to
education and maybe a whole lot more besides. No, it's not atom splitting and it's
perhaps quite logical to most people and second nature to historians. That doesn't
detract, for me, from the elegant thinking I see in deciding to sift through a pile of
otherwise inconsequential illustrated material to learn more about history. That
sort of detective work makes history more appealing, more alive somehow.
I am going to have to cut this public musing short. My regular beast has contracted
avery nasty virus which may yet have destroyed the hard drive's contents. For all
our sakes, let's hope not. Time to look for a cure. I wonder where I can get hold of
some laudanum?
In the meantime, a few little excerpts from the 'The Development of the English
Board Game, 1770 - 1850' by Caroline G. Goodfellow IN: The
International Journal for the Study of Board Games. There are a few articles and
extracts available as pdfs. The cited article is well worth downloading, if only for
the nice prints included. If 'things' go well, I may yet find - and add - some more
relevant links. Or not.
"There are only a few basic methods of playing [board] games and over the past
250 years many thousands of variations have been created. The basic methods of
play come down to four types – race games, strategy games, table games and card
games. Many were originally developed for adults and were later adapted for
children. [..]
The Game of Goose is generally regarded as the prototype of the modern race
game. Devised in Italy and taken from much early formats of games played in the
Middle and Far East, it was first noted in England by John Wolfe in 1597 as “the
Newe and Most Pleasant Game of the Goose”. [..]

36. Many of the first publishers of games were in fact cartographers and they quickly
included the race game idea into game of Geography. The spiral format was not
used; it was replaced by a map – of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland
(collectively or individually), of Europe or of the world."
Update: Closely related: New exhibition site (March 2009) at BNF {en français}:
**Jeux de Princes, Jeux de Vilains**
posted by peacay at 9:07 am
2 2 C O M M E N T S :
Luciana Christante said...
These pictures are simply awesome. Thanks. Hope your HD's contents are
safe!
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 10:22
Brett said...
Fantastic post! I've talked a bit about military-themed board games on my
blog,here and here; for some reason it amazes me just how far back these
games go.
I think we can date From the Ranks to Field Marshal a little more precisely,
to 1914 or 1915, as I discuss in my first link. And the last game you show is
new to me, but it's clearly from the First World War, not from the 1940s: the
technology is 1910s (airships and that weird aeroplane) and one of the cities
up the top is Petrograd, the name of St Petersburg between 1914 and 1924.
And from the fact that it shows an armoured car instead of a tank, I'd say it's
from 1916 (when tanks were first used) or earlier. Probably earlier from the
primitive look of that aeroplane!

37. And I'm fully on-board (ha) with your comments about the evidence for
historical ideas and attitudes that can be gleaned from studying such games.
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 11:32
Axis of Entropy said...
Anyone know why so many of those older board games had 63 spaces?
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 11:51
Joey Parlett said...
THIS IS THE BEST EVER! Thanks so so so so much. More like board with
my life till I looked at these lil gems.
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 12:00
Karla said...
Most intriguing. Are there instructions for all of them, or just those that have
the instructions printed (in whatever language) on the game surface itself?
My most unusual board game (by no means as elegant as most of these, but
still...) has a title that translates to "Building Stalin's Monument," which
refers to the gigantic Stalin statue that briefly loomed over Prague. The game
is loosely based on Monopoly and gets played at Christmas every now and
then (there have to be enough players to make it worthwhile). We've never
actually pasted the print to a board, so the parts tend to travel around the
table a bit during play as the players move elbows and breathe and such.
Changing the subject slightly, my understanding is that while laudanum is a

38. venerable opiate, heroin (also, of course, an opiate) has only been around for
about a hundred years and was invented (I believe by Bayer) as a cure for
morphine addiction. I may not be remembering all of this quite perfectly but
that's how it sticks in my head from a book I once proofread on heroin (!).
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 13:29
Karla said...
Oh, and you will feel much better once the laudanum takes effect. Be sure to
feed some to the ailing HD too. It should do in the virus, especially if you
spoon the laudanum directly onto the mechanism (although that might
cause other problems, of course). Take two drams and call in the morning.
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 13:35
Maria Fellowsisters said...
You are amazing! I follow Bibliodyssey since quite a while and I enjoy every
single of your posts.
Keep up the great work!
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 20:47
UC said...
Fantastic blog and fantastic post, as usual!
"Zuogh dal cacciator" means "Game of the hunter". "Zuogh" is a northern
Italy dialect form of "Giuoco", game.
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 21:15

39. renatoram said...
Zuogh dal cacciator: "The Game of the Hunter"
The writing is in vulgar/dialectal italian. What I can make of it from the
photo is:
"The Game of the Hunter: you play with two dice. First you roll to see who
goes first, then every player places money on the board, and rolls".
It's very hard to read both because the language is very archaic and because
it uses several random abbreviations.
It looks to be a simple betting game: the phrases on the sections are mostly
color, but if you roll 12 you scoop up all the bets. ('tira tutt')
If you have a higher resolution and are interested I could try to decipher
more :)
(yeah, I'm italian)
19 NOVEMBER, 2008 21:38
Kittybriton said...
The thing about buying laudanum for the starving children rather than food
makes sense. Particularly if the L. was less expensive volume for volume
than food.
What a sad commentary on the times!
Thank you, BTW, for posting these. It is so easy to forget what an important
part of our humanity is represented by playing games, particularly before
the development of the entertainment industry.
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 02:58

40. misteraitch said...
This has to be one of my favourite ever Bibliodyssey posts, which is saying a
lot. Bravo!
I hope your suspected virus caused no harm.
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 06:51
willow said...
Who would have thought that board games had been around that long? The
Noble Swan is my favorite, but they are all amazing.
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 10:00
António Erre said...
It's a pitty you didn't show the marks, pieces and dices to play with these
astonishing board games. Love the post.
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 11:08
johanna said...
i always love to visit your blog, but this is one of the best posts ever!! i can´t
pick a favorite of these games, they are all just great! (any problems if i
*borrow* a pic and show it on my blog with a link to you?)
keep up your great work!!!
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 22:34

41. jeffrey said...
This is awesome! Thank you for your brilliant blog!
20 NOVEMBER, 2008 23:05
Pius said...
This post exceeds even your usual high standards. Amazing stuff, I had no
idea board games had such a long history. Thanks so much!
21 NOVEMBER, 2008 05:00
ShakaUVM said...
How do you play them??
23 NOVEMBER, 2008 12:19
Marge said...
Laudnum is tincture of opium, and antedates heroin by centuries (Heroin
was synthesised from opium only in the late 19th century).
Sorry to burst your bubble on the infant mortality and starvation theory, but
it's far more likely related to gastroenteritis and cholera. Before the modern
era diarrhea was a leading cause of infant mortality. Opium causes
constipation and so was a standard treatment for diarrhea. What you're
probably looking at are disease peaks, causing both the mortality and the
increased demand for opiates.

42. The board games are great, but have to correct you on the medicine and
history!
30 NOVEMBER, 2008 00:29
peacay said...
Well, the only bubble I was really trying to inflate was the idea that unusual
evidence (pharmacy register, board games) can be used as secondary
historical sources. Thanks for the corrections. This post was fairly obviously
(I hope) a long way from Beta release quality when it was abandoned and
posted. Stream of conciousness/half remembered factoids are usually
filtered through google before being made public. This entry will stand as
a(nother) reminder of that. Cheers.
30 NOVEMBER, 2008 04:17
Justin du Coeur said...
What a delightful post! If you don't mind, I'd like to link to this from the
Medieval and Renaissance Games homepage that I run
(http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/).
And thanks for the pointer to the Museum's page -- the Digital Image service
there should be quite the godsend for studying these boards for more
details...
01 DECEMBER, 2008 07:07
mirror2image said...
Wow, what a great post! It's especially interesting for me as I'm thinking
about application of Augmented Reality to board games.

43. 06 JANUARY, 2009 18:15
Patrick Wirbeleit said...
the "game of the hunt" could also be seen as a kind of early "propaganda" - it
says:"the Turk who got caught by the lion has lost the game".
At least it has got a political touch.
This is such a great blog! I cannot find the words to decribe how much I like
it!
15 MAY, 2009 07:44
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