31 May – 11 September 2024

State Anteroom of the Armoury Chamber

Organized by

The Moscow Kremlin Museums

Participants:

The Moscow Kremlin Museums, State Tretiakov Gallery, State Historical Museum, State Museum of A.S. Pushkin, State Museum of Oriental Arts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Archaeological Department of the History Faculty of the Moscow State University named by M.V. Lomonosov, Moscow State United Museum and Heritage Site, State Russian Library

  

The exhibition tells the story of table games, one of the most popular forms of leisure since ancient times. The author of the "Book of Games" of 1283, the oldest surviving treatise on this fascinating pastime, defined them as "games played while seated": primarily chess, draughts, tafl, backgammon, and tric-trac. Cards and puzzles of all kinds can also be included.

Visitors will get to know the history of hobby games, the way they came to our country, the fashion that defined the popularity of some and the decline of interest in others in different periods.

Many of the games have survived to the present day, while others have completely disappeared. Well-known rules of some games could have changed considerably: it is known that dice were once used in chess; and there was a variant of the chess game with four players.  The display shows one of the quadruple chess sets of 76 figures. Learning to play chess and draughts was a must for future monarchs, while sets of games were used as valuable diplomatic gifts. According to the legend, silver-gilt chess set in the shape of warriors were presented to Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich by the Brandenburg Ambassador Joachim Scultet. The same monarch owned a leisure game set made in the first half of the 17th century by Augsburg master Ulrich Baumgartner and engraver Paul Göttich. It contains a board not only for chess, but also for draughts, backgammon and nine men’s morris. During the reign of Peter the Great, chess and draughts became an aristocratic pastime – they were part of the programme of Peter's Assemblies. Interestingly, not only did Empress Catherine the Great excel at the strategy of the game, but she also made her own set of chess pieces, which also became an exhibit in the exhibition.

Rationalism in the Age of Enlightenment led to the social popularity of brain twisters such as solitaire, as well as optical illusions known as anamorphosis – a distorted image that requires a particular vantage point or special devices to see a recognisable image.

Games, which used a board and dice to determine a player's turn, became popular in the 19th century. On display are boards from the games "Jeu de cosaques" originating from the 1820-1830s and the "Tour Around Russia", produced in 1885.  

A well known idiom to "play at spillikins" means "to be occupied with trivialities". But this pastime requires specific skills, concentration, space imagination, and logical thinking. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to compare two sets of the spillikins game – a European set made from ivory and a wooden set crafted by Russian woodturners, admired for its miniature size.

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, playing cards became a special cultural tradition of demonstrative idleness among the nobility. The exhibition presents cards from packs made in Western Europe and Russia in the 18th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition also features special gold coins used by players at court – the so-called "court coins", as well as various accessories: stands for decks equipped with a bolt for flattening them, sets in special boxes containing playing jettons, pens for chalks and brushes for wiping chalk off the cloth.

Despite its small size, the exhibition includes works of fine and decorative arts, archaeological finds and numismatics, providing a broad chronological and geographical cross-section of such a phenomenon as table games. The oldest exhibit is a unique set of playing chips from the second half of the 10th century, made of light blue and blue glass decorated with gold foil, found in the burial chamber of the "Gnezdovo" complex near Smolensk. Artefacts found during archaeological excavations on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin – figures made of stone and horn, a stone slab with a 64-square playing field and draughts – date back to the 13th century. The most recent items are cards from the "Russian style" deck, the illustrations of which are still in use today. The cards were issued to coincide with the 300th Anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, and the design was created in 1911 at the German playing card factory Dondorf. Visitors to the exhibition can also see phototypes of the court ball attendees in the costumes that served as models for the design of the card deck.

Numerous representations of chess, draughts, checkers, cards, and tric-trac on art objects of various purposes, as well as in paintings and graphic, show how important board games have been in national culture – crafts, literature, education and the performing arts – in different historical periods.