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Drawings of bizarre and violent kids' games from 1657 [1]
['Mark Frauenfelder']
Date: 2025-05-30
"The Games and Pleasures of Childhood" is a set of 50 engravings published in 1657 by French engraver Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella (1636-1697).
Some of the games depicted in the series are familiar. One drawing shows kids playing paddle ball; another shows four kids blowing soap bubbles (while two kids in the scene punch and kick each other to settle a score); another shows them playing blind man's bluff. There's also golf, darts, archery, and sledding.
Some of the pastimes are strange, dangerous, and violent. One card has the kids lining up to jump over a big campfire. Another shows them in a riotous slug fest. The weirdest one has them holding one another upside down to fart in each other's faces.
Public Domain Review has scans of the cards and a short article about the series.
Previously:
• How card games became cool again
[END]
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