Primitive Old Pencil-drawn Wooden Parcheesi Game Board with Great Reverse

Regular price $95.00

Not to everyone's taste, I know, but I think this is really beautiful, and I must say that the more I look at painstakingly painted, carefully crafted antique game boards (fetching grand prices), the more I find myself attracted to rougher and plainer ones, made with whatever was around, and driven by the immediacy of wanting to play! I think this non-preciousness is made even better when the boards tells stories of the people who made and used them, as does this one on the reverse side, where, in addition to a smaller board for another game, there are lots of cursive-written names. I see a Hattie Webb, and an Edith Andrews, among others, in addition to several iterations of W.L Emery, who I think maybe made the board; I like to imagine these were the names of crushes or prospective future wives, with the outcome of the game somehow forecasting which of them would prove the true love! 

The board on the front is for Parcheesi, played with two dice and four pieces per player, and which is actually a brand-name American adaptation of the Native American board game Pachisi. 

The board is old and shows cracking to the surface of the wood, with dings and scratches and a a few yellow paint spatters on the back side, as well as an old piece of what I think is blue bubble gum, which I almost removed but decided to leave on as it is part of this board's pretty fantastic patina! (I am happy to scrape it off before shipping if you prefer!) 14 3/4" x 14" x 3/4" thick and ready to hang.