Ground Billiards in Stained Glass and a Virtual Tour

[Pin]

According to Hendricks, the earliest evidence of ground billiards is in English and French letters of excuse to magistrates after people had been beaten or killed playing the game. Not in fights or arguments, you must understand. The stick just slipped from someone's hand, it was an awful accident. Honest.

From memory, these letters date from around 1300. (My memory of Hendricks, not my memory of the year 1300.) The other early evidence putting a date to people playing ground billiards is a stained glass window in Gloucester Cathedral, England, from about 1340. Hendricks didn't give us a photo, so I've dug some out.

Not bad for nearly 700 years old!
The ground billiards player, swinging a curved stick (the forerunner of the mace in table billiards) has been claimed by golfers, but really he's *ours*.

You can see the window in context on a virtual tour of Gloucester Cathedral (which is more interesting than I expected!) Find your way to the Presbytery, and he's to the right of the three steeples on the altar:
http://www.photosbykev.co.uk/panoramas/St_Peters_v3/360pano.html

Elsewhere in the Cathedral, they still have some crooked sticks handy. Surely they don't keep that hockey stick for people who want to dress up as the billiard player?

And finally on my virtual travels, if you're very enamoured with the billiard player, you can buy one for your own window. I've gotta admit, I'm kinda tempted...
https://www.window-clings.uk/LNCECShowProduct.cfm?Id=556

 

[book collector]

I have an old rule book by Strutt 1801 I think , Glig Gamena or something like that, I would look to be sure, but I never unpacked from our last move It has hand colored plates in it, and one or two If I remember correctly, are a person playing lawn billiards. I remember when I found this book I also found a couple of French books on the rules of court life in Paris in the 17 and 1800s . Pretty fascinating details of how to deal with superiors and inferiors, by the different players at court. A mistake could land you in prison or worse.

 

[Pin]

Ahh, I just had a look on Google and Glig Gamena is the same book as Sports and Passtimes of the People of England. Hendricks shows one of the ground billiards woodcuts in his History of Billiards, but only in black and white.
It always surprises me to find color pictures in these old books. Mingaud (only in PDF) and John Roberts Snr come to mind.

Your collection sounds great. Do you read French?

 

[book collector]

Ahh, I just had a look on Google and Glig Gamena is the same book as Sports and Passtimes of the People of England. Hendricks shows one of the ground billiards woodcuts in his History of Billiards, but only in black and white.
It always surprises me to find color pictures in these old books. Mingaud (only in PDF) and John Roberts Snr come to mind.

Your collection sounds great. Do you read French?

I don't read French. I was thinking the first billiard book with printed color was Garnier 1888 , maybe that is first American, I believe the rest were hand water colored. I am almost positive there were no color plates in the Mingauds originally. I still have a very nice collection, I lost interest and my health was so bad about 15 years ago ,that I sold a lot of the rarer books. At one time, I believe I had the nicest example of a first edition Mingaud English version , in the world. I have always regretted selling that book.
I remember when I first started collecting , there was a very small group of people in the world that bought books seriously. It was
early 80s before the internet and extremely difficult to find anything, and if you did , they almost always wanted crazy money for it. .
I did find a guy in New Zealand that was a book dealer, who really helped me a lot. he would send out a wish list to all the book dealers for me. Without him and a friend here in Ohio, I probably would have given up. I wish I had the energy to do something with the collection , but even if I did ,I have other things I would rather do instead. I hope you enjoy your collection for many years to come. If there is anything you ever want to discuss PM me .