Object lesson: The Art of the Game
An abstract painting by Irving Lehman (1899–1933), c. 1950, a c. 1880 Parcheesi board, American, and c. 1890 folk art coat tree, American, at Battle Brown, an antiques store in Hudson, New York. Photograph courtesy of Battle Brown, Hudson, New York. When Warren Battle, co-owner of the art and antiques store Battle Brown in Hudson, New York, saw a polychromatic Parcheesi board for sale at last year’s Delaware Antiques Show, he stopped dead in his tracks. It wasn’t inexpensive, “but it was so beautiful,” he remembers. Hand-painted in vibrant colors, it was a humble yet proud piece made for quiet entertainment. It was a work of art in the way that so much folk Americana is: as a resonant testimonial to a moment, an individual, and a love of play. Battle had to have it. Upon bringing it back to his shop on Warren Street, Battle took a curatorial approach to displaying the Parcheesi board. When he hung it beneath an abstract painting from the 1950s, both came alive. “The colors were gorgeous together, mixing art from one hundred years apart,” he says. Parcheesi game board, American, mid-1800s. Wood, paint; 29 by 8 ½ inches. Board games have been a part of human socializing since the earliest days of civilization. Game boards turn up often in archaeological digs of highly complex ancient societies. Egyptians played a game called Senet that dates to around 2620 bc, and was played well into the Roman period. Similarly, the Royal Game of Ur appears in archeological records as early as 2600 bc in Mesopotamia. That game can be played today thanks to the efforts of British Museum curator Irving Finkel. In the 1980s Finkel reconstructed the game’s rules by translating a Babylonian clay tablet that detailed how it was played. That Senet