We research, produce and sell our own line of historic board, dice and card games. We have been studying games of the past for over fifteen years, and have written a column, "The Compleat Gamester" for Renaissance Magazine, as well as articles on the history of games for Smoke & Fire News.
Before going into business, we were members of a Scottish living history group with a strong educational focus, and spent several years teaching the public about the history of games as our niche within that group. Our wares are purchased by historical reenactors around the world; used in school classrooms as teaching aids; and have been sold in the museum stores of respected living-history sites such as Plimoth Plantation, The Jamestown Settlement, and St. Maries City. Included with the each game is a brief history, as well as a bibliography documenting our sources.
Demonstrations
Game Demos
In addition to selling our wares, we provide a great deal of free entertainment to the visiting public. We use a large marquee tent as "portable gaming hall" where we set up several tables and invite the public and participants to sit down to learn a period game for free in a coffeehouse-like family-friendly atmosphere. As we play, we try to impart some of the history of games to our visitors. For those who are too timid to play a game with us, or hesitant to ask questions, our tent includes signage which provides additional historical information about our wares, and the history of games and gambling.
Wood Turning Demo
Right: Wood turning at the Upper Great Lakes Renaissance Festival, Ironwood MI, 2002.
Appearances
A "resume" of some of the juried events we have attended include:
Photos courtesy of http://www.atthefaire.com
(Some of the exclusive social/gambling clubs of 18th an 19th century London have origins as coffee houses. Also, we have recently found reference to gambling tents as part of the sideline entertainments at English horse races such as Epson during the 18th and 19th centuries) 
Above: our staff playing games with the public at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon, Lafayette Indiana.
We can also present a demonstration of period wood-turning, fashioning simple wooden toys, game pieces, lace-making bobbins, and other small items. Rather than using a spring-pole lathe as can be seen used by other demonstrators of man-powered turning, I use a small hand-pumped bow lathe inspired by illustrations dating to the 17th century. I have assembled some of the documentation for my turning demonstration along with pictures of my own lathe on a website on the history of woodturning
We first joined a living history group in 1989, and have been in business since 1995. Over the years we have appeared at historic-themed events portraying a range of eras. As result we have historic attire suitable for event from the Renaissance to the Fur Trade Era.
Views of our encampment:
Space requirements: At outdoor events, we have two different marquee tents that we can use as our "portable gaming hall" where we demonstrate and sell our games. Depending on the space we have available we can set up our preferred 18' x 24' marquee tent, or a smaller 12' x 18' marquee.
In addition, we have a 10' x 8' shade fly next to it for the wood turning demonstration, and we use two 10' x 13' sleeping tents to shelter ourselves, and our sales help. Therefore at events where we can camp behind our sales tent, our preference is for a 30' x 30' space.
Wooden Games
Dice Dice Games
Period Playing Cards
Knotwork Gallery
Customer Comments
Celtic T-shirts
Travel Games
Links
Work in progress
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