AAS houses a representative collection of American games, from board games inspired by the adventures of Nellie Bly to educational puzzles and fancy paper dolls, but one fascinating subgroup of this collection harnesses the popularity of one entertainment option of the 1800s: reading. Before the world ogled over athletes and movie stars, the greatest celebrities were authors. People traveled ...
Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed me the opportunity to explore the AAS catalog in fun new ways. Inspired by my family’s board games, which have been stacked in the living room since our transition to remote work, one recent search led to our games collection. While many of the games piqued ...
!["The Improved and Illustrated Game of Dr. Busby." Salem, Mass.: Published by W. and S. B. Ives., [1843?].](https://pastispresent.org/wp-content/uploads/Dr.-Busby.jpg)
This past summer we completed work to make the Society’s collection of over four hundred games more accessible to our readers and the scholarly community. Christine Graham Ward, the Society’s Visual Materials Cataloger, created detailed records for each game in our General Catalog. These records include a brief description of each game, a tally of ...
A few months ago we posted an image on Instagram and Facebook that, while fun, we had no particular expectations for. It was a quite a surprise, then, when it garnered a massive amount of attention on both platforms. To this day it remains one of our most widely circulated posts on Facebook. The image was a ...
While trolling for children’s books and games at the Papermania fair held several weeks ago in the basement of the Hartford Civic Center (you could hear the marching band playing for the UConn men’s basketball game upstairs), I made the happy discovery of this aptly titled Parlor Foot-ball Game, issued by picture book and game ...
American Fortune Telling Cards, with Directions. New York and Philadelphia: Turner & Fisher, after 1835. 36 cards with box. AAS has several sets of fortune telling cards in its Toys and Games collection. This set features typical four-suit cards suggesting travel, wealth, poverty, love, etc., but is distinctive because many of the images feature American eagles, ...
The Game of Jack of All Trades. New York: McLoughlin Bros., ca. 1900. This is a welcome addition to our holdings of McLoughlin Bros. games. McLoughlin published an extensive line of small boxed card games, like Jack of All Trades. Games and picture books about professions and trades were used since the late eighteenth century to ...
Pictures from the Civil War in North America - Bilder aus dem Bugerkriege in Nordamerica - Des tableaux de la guerre-civile en Amerique du Nord. Nuremberg: G.W. Faber, [c. 1864] Puzzle blocks in box, with six hand-colored lithographs showing the solutions. This German game was produced for the European and American markets and includes six small ...
With the pending release of Apple Computers’ tablet computer and the surrounding press and discussion, it seemed like a good time to review the precursor to it all, the humble school slate. The Antiquarian Society has several nineteenth-century slates in the games collection, including one with multiple pages, patented in 1867 and bound like a ...
