[Lottery game | Loteryspel]

[Netherlands, ca. 1780?]

50 illustrated cards, 65 x 40 mm; 50 text cards, 31 x 41 mm; 50 prize cards, 26 x 38 mm (including 18 IV Classe niets) | Box: 102 x 75 x 36 mm

A rare printed Dutch lottery game, fully etched and engraved, by all appearances complete, with 50 illustrated cards, all hand-colored, depicting figures engaged in different activities; 50 text cards on yellow paper, each with a rhyming couplet, these variously inspirational, instructive, or self-referential to the lottery genre; and 50 small prize cards distributed across four different classes. These lotteries were published with variable numbers of cards and classes while they were in vogue, a period that stretched well into the 19th century. Sets with 50 and 60 cards were both common. Our rhyming couplet cards were printed from the very same plates as those used in Buijnsters-Smets' AvS 3968 (18th century; see description on p. 122 and reproductions on p. 123). Our illustrations are possibly the very same as those they find among an 18th-century edition at NOM (Nederlands Openluchtmuseum?), or at least follow a very similar program: #2 being a man with a cello, #6 is Fortune, and #50 a man in a field with a sickle. Those illustrated cards measure 6.5 x 4 cm, like ours, and that edition is also housed in a contemporary box covered in marbled paper (as many appear to have been). Buijnsters-Smets also describe a 50-card game of ca. 1760 whose #50 is a man with a sickle, but its #7 not matching ours, and so perhaps representing an earlier iteration of the illustration program. All to say, we find little reason to deviate from our source, who called this edition ca. 1780. ¶ “The type of lottery that developed in the Low Countries is known as the Dutch or class lottery. The distinguishing features of a class lottery are twofold: There is a series of drawings, called classes, and the number and price of tickets as well as the number and amounts of prizes are fixed in advance. This way, the organizer does not bear any risk. The prizes usually increase from class to class and the top prize is drawn in the last class” (Willmann). Buijnsters-Smets consider games like ours a household variation (huisvariant) on these larger, more institutional class lotteries. They identify the 1726 Generaliteitsloterij as the likely origin, with household versions starting to appear around 1755. Some of the rhyming couplets do have a certain hortative flair to them, like conduct literature intended for youth, perhaps reinforcing the idea of household game play. See the text card for #25, for example: "Sighing is not fitting for youth, who are created for joy." Or #30, which begins, "Hear, be silent, and look." ¶ Lottery publishers must have capitalized on a public enthusiasm for lotteries in general, which were widely used to raise funds (to say nothing of other ubiquitous forms of gambling). In the young United States, for example, the Continental Congress used a class lottery to assist soldiers in 1776. “Harvard College and others, in fact most educational institutions, financed themselves in that manner…By the early part of the 19th century lotteries were widespread. People of every class gambled. They bet on the horse races, wagered on card games, and ‘backed’ their favorites in a cockfight. But the most common form of gambling was the lottery” (Smith). ¶ A model example of a popular 18th-century printed game.

CONDITION: Printed entirely from etched and engraved plates, each piece mounted on thick contemporary cardstock. Housed in a contemporary compartmentalized box, lined inside with decorative block-printed paper, the outside covered in marbled paper. A copy in the Walison collection has a typewritten (getypt) instruction sheet, which rather sounds like a later addition, something Buijnsters-Smets also suspect (hier niet bijpassende?). Instruction sheets are often found with lottery games, and one could well have been issued with this one, but the NOM copy upon which Buijnsters-Smets based their description has no such sheet. ¶ Half a dozen cards wormed at the bottom, mostly affecting the card number, only barely touching the illustrated area; the printed paper starting to detach from some cards; the paper of a few of the prize cards a trifle skinned; generally a bit soiled, the blank versos especially; some occasional creasing and a few wormholes. Two dividers in the box detached, but still present and functional; outside of the box worn, the bottom a little wormed, and two corners of the lid torn.

REFERENCES: P.J. Buijnsters and Leontine Buijnsters-Smets, Papertoys: Speelprenten en papieren speelgoed in Nederland (1640-1920) (2005), p. 120-130 (overview and catalog of the Dutch lotteries); Gerald Willmann, “The History of Lotteries,” (Stanford University Department of Economics, 3 August 1999, unpublished paper; http://willmann.com/~gerald/history.pdf), p. 6; Stanley S. Smith, “Lotteries,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 38.5 (Jan/Feb 1948), p. 548-549; The American Cyclopaedia (NY: Appleton, 1883), v. 10, p. 647 (“The [Dutch] lottery is supported by a fixed percentage deducted from each prize”)

Item #762