Jeu De Cubes
Date: 1890s
Size: 18 x 20.5
Notes: Poster, Game, Ephemera
Artist: Anonymous
Information: For more details, please call 514 656 3301
About The Poster: This wonderful piece of 1890's ephemera came to me from a woman who is as fascinated by old paper as I am. The two of us spent hours staring at what is the paper print of a board game issued in France - a game called Jeu du Cubes Comiques, which translates roughly into, "game of funny squares". According to the directions, "With this new kind of square, on can build four fairly large, funny characters. You can also make them smaller by removing one or two squares from the column from which they are made which makes the game loads of fun. We've also included six separate funny faces which can be used for fun - you can replace a body part with one of these face... " . In looking up board games and their history I came across a blog entry by someone which seemed to confirm some of what Ihad been thinking. To wit: " ...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... 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. ...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 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. [..] Many of the first publishers of games were in fact cartographers..." (www.bibliodyssey.com Very cool!! When you look closely at the figures you can indeed see much of the social structure of French society - highbrow and lowbrow, just about everything is illustrated in this wonderful, unlined piece. It measures 18 x 29 inches and was recently professionally linen lined.
