Object: Games board and pieces

Object name(s):

Games board and pieces

Brief description:

Backgammon and Chess Board. Of various coloured woods with burnt scrolls, the chequers of animals, birds, and flowers. The interior ornamented with groups of camels and figures, bordered with carvings in relief, coloured, of men playing at various games, containing 29 draughtmen, carved on both sides with animals

Collection:

Victoria and Albert Museum

Associated concept:

Games

Associated concept:

Woodwork

Associated concept:

Household objects

Associated concept:

Enslavement

Associated person:

Bernal, Ralph

Content - concept:

camels

Current reproduction location:

https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2017JV4461/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg

Location type:

Thumbnail

Dimension:

Depth

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

83

Dimension:

Width

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

48.5

Dimension:

Thickness

Dimension measured part:

fully open

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

5

Dimension:

Depth

Dimension measured part:

closed

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

41.5

Dimension:

Thickness

Dimension measured part:

closed

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

10.6

Material:

wood

Object history note:

Bought (Ralph Bernal Collection) £10 10s. 'English. About 1660' Provenance Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour. In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting. When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.

Object name:

Games board and pieces

Object number:

2393:1 to 29-1855

Object production date:

1650-1655

Date - association:

made

Date - earliest / single:

1650-01-01

Date - latest:

1655-12-31

Object production person:

unknown

Object production place:

England

Place association:

made

Place note:

possibly

Object production place:

Netherlands

Place association:

made

Place note:

possibly

Object production place:

Eger

Place association:

made

Place note:

possibly

Physical description:

Backgammon and Chess Board. Of various coloured woods with burnt scrolls, the chequers of animals, birds, and flowers. The interior ornamented with groups of camels and figures, bordered with carvings in relief, coloured, of men playing at various games, containing 29 draughtmen, carved on both sides with animals

Reproduction number:

2017JV4461

Reproduction number:

2017KK1596

Responsible department/section:

FWK

Technique:

carving

Technique:

marquetry

Technique:

Painting, marquetry and carving.

Text:

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O58560/

Text reason:

Collections online record

Text:

GAMES BOARD AND DRAUGHTSMEN ENGLISH or DUTCH; early seventeenth century Various woods. The inside border illustrates games such as quintain, ninepins, and tennis. Note also the oriental shipping and caravan scenes, which reflect the interest aroused by the activities of the recently founded Dutch and English East India Companies.

Text date:

pre October 2000

Text reason:

Gallery label text

Text:

BACKGAMMON and CHESS BOARD. Of various coloured woods with burnt scrolls, the chequers of animals, birds and flowers. The interior ornamented with groups of camels and figures, bordered with carvings in relief, coloured, of men playing at various games, - containing 29 draughtsmen, carved on both sides with animals. English. About 1660. 31.5 in. by 19 in. Bought (Bernal Coll.), 10l 10s.

Text date:

ca. 1860

Text reason:

Gallery label text

Text:

GAMES BOARD and DRAUGHTSMEN Various woods. Eger (now in Hungary); about 1650 The board is laid out for chess and draughts, backgammon, merels and fox-and-geese; the inside borders illustrate other games such as shovelboard, quintain, ninepins and tennis. The Eger cabinet-makers were celebrated for this kind of marquetry and relief carving. Large quantities were produced for export including games boards which were especially popular as gifts, although the texhnique was also applied to larger pieces of furniture, notably caskets

Text date:

ca. 06/1987

Text reason:

Gallery label text

User's reference:

Reference:

Christie and Manson, Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Works of Art, from the Byzantine Period to that of Louis Seize, of that Distinguished Collector, Ralph Bernal (London, 1855)

Reference:

The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Slave Registers: Jamaica: St. Ann. (1) Indexed, 1832, T 71/49

Reference:

Hannah Young, ''The perfection of his taste': Ralph Bernal, collecting and slave-ownership in 19th-century Britain', Cultural and Social History, 19:1 (2022), pp. 19-37

User's reference:

Reference:

Pollen, John Hungerford, Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork, (South Kensington Museum, London, 1874) p. 162-166

User's reference:

Reference:

Victoria & Albert Museum: Fifty Masterpieces of Woodwork (London, 1955), no. 25. A Games Board Highly elaborate chessboards are frequently mentioned in medieval inventories, and in contemporary illuminations ladies v gentlemen are shown engaged in the game. Henry VIII possessed costly ‘bourrles' or ‘pairs of tables’ for the ‘Pleasaunt and Wittie Plaie of the Cheastes'; and in later Renaissance times exquisitely wrought boards of ivory, rock-crystal, and ornamental woods, often decorated with designs or figured subjects, came into increased vogue among the noble and merchant classes. This seventeenth-century games-board, made in England or Holland, is marked on the inside for backgammon and on the outside for merels and fox-and-geese, as well as for chess. The illustrations carved on the inside border show on the left (clockwise) shovel-board, bat-and-ball, kayles(?) and quintain, and on the right bagtelle, knur-and-spell, nine-pins, and tennis. The board is framed in ebonized pearwood and decorated with marquetry of satinwood, boxwood, tulip and other woods. The oriental caravan and shipping scenes, interpreted by European eyes soon after 1600, illustrate the effect on decoration of early trading ventures by the English and Dutch East India Companies. The board, formerly in the Bernal Collection was bought by the Museum in 1855. English or Dutch; early seventeenth century. L. 31 ½ in., W. 19 in.

Persistent shareable link for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/b7bef585-a19c-321b-8b6b-3118778aa816

Use licence for this record: CC BY-NC

Attribution for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/b7bef585-a19c-321b-8b6b-3118778aa816, Victoria and Albert Museum, CC BY-NC

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