Parcheesi Board with Tin Horse

This is actually my first painting of an antique game board, but there are several more on the horizon.  I love just about any antique made of wood and finished with old paint. It could be a decoy, a barber pole, weathervane, trade sign or a child’s toy; but whatever it is, it was probably made with love and care and painted to the best of the respective artists’ talents.  While most Parcheesi boards have the same basic design because the game itself is pretty standard, the designs, paint patterns and colors are often quite unique.

As an artist, I like to try to imagine the long-gone and probably unknown artists who created and painted the various antiques that are so avidly collected today.  This particular one has a marvelous abstract quality and a really striking but simple color scheme.  A game board quite similar to this one recently sold for $18,000. The “artist” who created this game board may well have made less than $18,000 in his (or her) life. 

I will probably paint some game boards without the “frames” around them and with no other embellishments, but the tin horse which was made about the same time the game board was made was a perfect addition, and while the frame around the board was a perfect place to put the horse, the rusted tin offers a nice textural contrast to the weathered wood of the board.

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