Board games and Advertising in the Netherlands

My thanks to Prof Adrian Seville for alerting me to these two sites: HONG and Reclame Arsenaal

GAMES: HONG

(C) HONG

HONG (Historisch Overzicht Nederlandse Gezelschapsspellen) is a historical survey of Dutch games, the website of Rob van Linden. It can be browsed by publisher, title, and themes (cars, planes, boats, trains, sports, Disney, music etc). There is also simple and advanced searching (Uitgrebrieder zoeken).

Each entry typically has several digital images, showing the packaging (where applicable), contents and sometimes details, but not (for later games at least) necessarily each separate card or element of the game.  Many board games are commentated. There is a very useful table giving the chronology of games publishers and their relationship with each other.

Since I have to confess to an almost total ignorance both of Dutch games and language, I found date a rewarding way to search this impressive resource, it then becoming possible to make comparisions with British games. This is best done through the advanced screen. Entering 1700-1800 gave me 36 fascinating results. The major focus of the site is games dating from 1861-1999.

Krygs spel, 1710 Photo (C) Luigi Ciompi. The game is held
at the Openluchtmuseum

As in the case of the earliest game: the  Krygs Spel (left), many images (of the Game of the goose and other games) come from the Gioci dell'Oca website and from the Fred Horn Goose games at the Flemish Games archive, KHBO University in Bruges (a collection of 25,000 games housed in the Faculty of Education and Teacher Training, with its main focus "the integration of board games in early childhood, primary and secondary teaching"). Others come from Dutch museums (notably the Speelgoedmuseum Deventer)  and libraries, including the Reclame Arsenaal.  Each game is also cross-referenced to variant titles (where applicable) and to relevant reference works.

ADVERTISING: THE RECLAME ARSENAAL

(C) Reclame Arsenaal nl. (Home page)

The Reclame Arsenaal is the result of a merger in 2001 of the Nederlands Reclameachief (Dutch Advertising Archive), founded in 1981, and the Nederlands Reclame Museum (Dutch Advertising Museum), founded in 1975.

Again, a command of Dutch would be a distinct advantage, but there is much to explore: a searchable database, virtual museum, online exhibitions, etc. The material is divided into Advertisements, Posters, Small printed works (leaflet, calendars, etc.) and Varia (works in other media such as textiles, enamel) and dates back to 1870. For purposes of the virtual tour, online museum, etc the works are divided into periods: 1870-1915, 1915-1930, 1930-1940, 1940-1945, 1945-1960, 1960-1975, 1975-1990, 1990-2002. A nice, quirky touch is a street image for each period, showing the Reclame Arsenaal material as if displayed on billboards, etc. Mousing over one of these items turns it into colour, while clicking brings up a pop-up box with caption and link to the main object description. Each period is accompanied by digest of Dutch history.

The searchable database offers simple and advanced searching. My simple search for Chocolade brought up 21 items, all with thumbnails which click through to records with larger images.  Advanced searching enables the user to restrict results to type of object, collection (other collections, e.g. Decaux can be searched through this database) and date. There is Boolean searching. The collection includes games (a search for spel) yields 80 results.

There are also multimedia online exhibitions, for Persil and Packaging for example.

Both sites offer interesting ways to compare Dutch culture with our own, either chronologically, or through Dutch versions of familiar games or advertising of international products, as well as presenting Dutch popular culture in accessible and attractive ways.

Virtual exhibition: Jeux de princes, Jeux de vilains (BNF)

A quick post on a virtual exhibition of games which I came across on the Bibliothèque Nationale de France site. A little difficult to find, it is called Jeux de princes, jeux de vilains.  Based on a physical exhibition in 2009, it contextualises games through images not only of the games themselves, but also works of art showing games being played, and ephemera.

The exhibition is divided into the sinister and pleasurable sides of games and their place in society:  La face noire du jeu, Les plaisirs du jeu and La société ludique.

There are guided tours by the curators, commentaries on significant items and drop-down menus enabling the user to explore various aspects of playing cards, tarot, chess and children's games (les feuilletoirs). Many manifestations of Game of the goose are online. Much to explore, and to enjoy.

(C) Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Waddesdon board games: update

The excellent Giochi dell'Oca website contains the records and images for the French board games at Waddesdon Manor referred to in my blog post of June 26. They can be seen by selecting Collezione Rothschild - Waddesdon (The National Trust) from the Game Owner drop-down menu.  The full catalogue records (by Phillippa Plock) can also be seen as a pdf, without the associated images.  Further analysis and supplementary images of the Waddesdon games will soon appear on this site and the catalogue will, in due course, also be available through the Waddesdon Collection web pages.

(C) Waddesdon Manor, The Rothschild Collection (The National Trust)

Photo: Mike Fear © The National Trust, Waddesdon Manor.

(C) Giochi dell'Oca (website)

Games People Play exhibition

A selection from Adrian Seville's collection of printed board games is on display at Haldon Forest Park, near Exeter, at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World. The exhibition (part of the Cultural Olympiad) is titled Games people play and  runs until September 30.

The Giochidelloca Website for Games based on the Game of Goose: Guest post by Prof Adrian Seville

We are privileged to have our first guest post, by Adrian Seville, whose joint website with Luigi Ciompi contains a wealth of scholarship about board games based on the Game of the Goose. 

The Giochi dell'Oca website established by Luigi Ciompi and Adrian Seville now contains over 1600 images of printed board games based on or allied to the Game of the Goose (Jeu de l’Oie, Gioco dell’Oca, etc). The database contains not only games from their collections but also games from other collections, both private and public. Images are accessible from the archivio (archive) page. They are of good quality and are free to download, though permission to publish them elsewhere is required. Detailed information about many of the games is also given. The storia page gives a list of publications that can be downloaded and there is comprehensive bibliographia page. The pdf Hints on how to use the site  is an invaluable introduction (in English) to searching.

(C) Dr Luigi Compi

Board Games: the British Museum and the current exhibition at Waddesdon Manor

730 board games from the British Museum's collection are online. Many are from the bequest of Lady Charlotte Schreiber, (who also collected fans and playing cards). I focussed first on those from 1790-1800 (103 of them: British, continental and oriental) and then on the 45 Game of the Goose (see screen shot). All have excellent images and metadata.

(C) Trustees of the British Museum

There is currently an exhibition of French 18th century board games at Waddesdon Manor: Playing, learning, flirting: printed board games from eighteenth century France at Waddesdon Manor.  The games (mainly Le Jeu de l'Oie, the Game of the Goose, and its variations)  have also been recently catalogued but are not yet online. Several are exquisitely hand-coloured. The exhibition runs until October 28th 2012, with study sessions on July 20 and September 21.  There is an article on the collection and exhibition by curator Rachel Jacobs in the Summer 2012 edition of The Ephemerist.

(C) Waddesdon Manor

Further ephemera at Yale (1)

In addition to the wonderful collection of 18th century British trade cards and other ephemera at the Lewis Walpole Library (see June 7 post), Yale hosts a plethora of collections devoted to or including ephemera (and prints).  This is a brief overview. Further occasional posts will explore these resources in more depth

A search for ephemera of the Center for British Art takes the user to 66 individual and collection-level records.

The exhibitions pages include a description of an exhibition (from 2010) Art for all: British posters for transport.

Through Discover Yale Digital Content  you can find digitsed ephemera from.various libraries, galleries and museums under the Yale umbrella, including the Yale Center for British Art, Peabody Museum, University Art Gallley and University Library.  There are 1573 entries under board games, for example (screen shot), 3418 under trade card, and 3272 for playing card (including the major Cary Collection of Playing Cards at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscipt Library, which also also has a dedicated searchable database).

The Discover Yale Digital Content Advanced Search enables more sophisticated searching. Results can be restricted to resources available online and by repository. Genres (such as the above) can be found through the  keyword search.

Primary Sources at Yale is an educational tool where primary materials from all twenty two of Yale's libraries can be searched irrespective of format. Ephemera are divided between Visual materials, Realia and Printed or published texts.

(C) Yale University

GARD - The GAmes Research Database

GARD (the GAmes Research Database) is an invaluable resource, compiled by game collectors and experts who are aiming to create a comprehensive listing of board games and other old games in their own and other collections (both public and private).  The database can be browsed by maker and searched in various ways: examples, books, makers, gamenames (titles), adverts (in progress), registrations, and across a combination of these (including by date) in Scan tables. Thumbnails, which accompany nearly all the games, can be expanded by clicking the View button to the left of the table.This also reveals the full metadata.

(C) GARD

I had the pleasure of meeting the creators of GARD and other games and playing cards experts, who came to the Bodleian in 2010, viewed all the games in the John Johnson Collection and generously shared their expertise. They have added our holdings to GARD, with references to the exisitng digital images available through the Oxford Digital Library. Through the trademark and design register and copyright registrations (National Archives), they were usually able to assign dates to the games.


The site includes useful links and overviews of collections, both public and private.

The GARD site is very much work in progress and will eventually include articles on games, adverts for games and attempts to match rules to games without them (and vice versa).

There is a lot of very useful material in this site, achieved for the benefit of scholarship through painstaking research. Some of the site is restricted to members of GARD and others by invitation, but much is public and well worth exploring

Museum of Childhood website: update

The Museum of Childhood has a new website in the excellent V&A style. Easier to navigate and search (through V&A Search the Collections). Lots of interesting content and links to related images.

(C) Museum of London

Monash University Library

I read about ephemera at Monash University Library in a hard copy of their Recent Acquisitions 6, passed to me by a colleague. This can also be downloaded as a pdf or viewed as a virtual exhibition.  The Library exhibits its recent acquistions every two or three years. The current exhibition (8 December 2011 - 5 March 2012) includes ephemera, such as games, children's scrap books, rock posters, souvenirs and guides, exhibition guides, catalogues, an Olympic Games programme for 1932, and a broadside from 1841.

(C) 2011 Monash University

 
In exploring their website further I was excited to find a whole exhibition from 2006-07: Ephemera, with pdf catalogue and virtual exhibition. Richard Overell, Head of Rare Books (who mentions the John Johnson Collection in the foreword) explains that Monash University Library has been collecting ephemera since the 1990s to support research by social historians. Although many of their ephemera are recent, the collection impressively contains English pamphlets and broadsides from the late 17th century onwards. The catalogue is full of information about ephemera and the provenance of the material in Monash's collection and is beautifully illustrated with samples of the collection.

The introduction to the catalogue takes the form of a very interesting essay on the nature of ephemera The evidence that history forgot by Prof Graeme Davison.

(C) 2011 Monash University

Games at the V&A Museum of Childhood

The V&A Museum of Childhood website has very useful introductions to games, such as Game of Goose, Maze games, Chronological tables, The Kings & Queens of England, Snakes and Ladders, as well as later games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Jenga, etc.) all with images. There are pages too on toys (including Lane's telescopic view of the Great Exhibition and a Zoetrope), toy manufacturers, childcare, clothing, etc.  I particularly like the German toy sample book.

Copyright: © V&A Images.

Search the Collections is the over-arching V&A Search the Collections screen, which I have already blogged enthusiastically about, but a search for games produces a treasure trove of over a thousand board and card games, all illustrated, most in the museum's store.

Copyright: © V&A Images.

And, there is an exhibition of photographs of children by Julia Margaret Cameron, at the Museum of Childhood until 13 February 2012.

Cornell University: Games and other ephemera

Pastimes and Paradigms: games we play is an online exhibition (from 2004), documenting the evolution of games through material from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University.  Many historic board games are online, together with card games, jigsaws, puzzles, and prints showing children at play.  There are some nice animations too.

Copyright © 2004 Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections

The Rare and Manuscript Collections pages reveal digital collections of political Americana and Food, wine and culinary history resources (from the Nestlé library), including 10,000 restaurant menus from 1850s to the present. There is much more to explore: Search Cornell reveals 171 hits for ephemera, including theatre ephemera, posters, scrapbooks, broadsides and much else. All tantalising!

New-York Historical Society

The New-York Historical Society has just re-opened, so a good moment to blog about the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Art, in which I was privileged to work for a week on an exchange with the late Wendy Shadwell some years ago.  Bella C. Landauer and John Johnson were contemporaries and knew each other. Their collections differ slightly in focus, but there is much overlap.   Ephemera comes under Graphic Collections in the N-Y H S and are described in the following terms:

The Society’s ephemera collections include lottery tickets, trade cards, billheads, tobacco labels, theater playbills and countless other types of material that were created for temporary use but have survived to illuminate everyday life and popular culture. A highlight is the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Art, assembled over a forty-year period by the tireless Mrs. Landauer (1874-1960) and arranged alphabetically into 100 product categories, such as Banking, Food, Hotels, Theatrical Enterprises, and Transportation.

There are other ephemera collections too: Broadsides (catalogued), Dining Menus (mainly donated by Arnold Shircliffe) and American Board and Table games (Liman Collection).

(c) New-York Historical Society

John Johnson Collection digital projects

(c) Proquest

The website contains links to our digital projects:
The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (free in UK to HE, FE, Schools and Public Libraries). Themes: Advertising; Crime, Murders and Executions; 19th Century Entertainment; Popular Prints; Booktrade

Oxford Digitial Library: 18th century Entertainment; Writing Blanks and Board Games

VADS: this site includes Political Cartoons and Trades and Professions Prints from the John Johnson Collection

Toyota Project: Motor Cars; and selected images of other forms of transport

Ballads (all Bodleian Ballads, including those from the John Johnson Collection)