From the patents, an elegant minimalist set of French pattern playing cards: Arrange by rank, to show the styles In April of 1939, John Caldwell Hampshire (a subject of the King of Great Britain, residing in New York) was granted a patent for a New, Original, and Ornamental design for a Deck of Playing Cards. They are an elegant design, with only the symbol in the centre of the card, and the rank marked by the index. Additionally, the Ace, Jack, Queen, and King had bars in th

Another game from the patents! A forgotten game of lunar phases, clever marketing, and gambling from the Edwardian era: GB Patent No....

In 1929, Harry S. Abell of McLean, Virginia, patented an extraordinary card game to be played in 3 dimensions. He called it Allez...

In 1881, Charles Pierre Goldey patented a game that he had invented, based on the nature of the formation of words from three kinds of...

In 1906, Florence Annie Barker of "The Oaks", Huddersfield Road, Mirfield, Yorks patented a game of gardens and gardeners. Six suits of 7...

The standard whist deck has 52 cards in 4 suits: this is said to be symbolic: one card for each week of the year, and a suit for each...

On the 24th of January, 1928, Ototaro N. Yamamoto of San Gabriel CA, a flower raiser by profession, patented a new version of Hanafuda,...

My brother was recently on East Falkland, and so this seemed an auspicious reason to begin our blog with a game that was actually...