That's a good question. It took me years to find out the answer, starting back in about 1977 when I walked into a small antique mall on Columbus Avenue and 80th Street in New York City (this was before the area became yuppified) and spied two strange objects in a display case.
They looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn't sure exactly what they were. The wood that comprised the bodies had a soft patina. The miniature piano key pegs snapped up with a satisfying little click.
"What are those?" I asked.
"Ten dollars," replied the dealer.
I figured that the ivory in them had to be worth at least ten bucks, so I bought them. I still had no idea what they really were -- game counters of some sort, I thought. A few years later I saw another in a much fancier antique shop.
This one had mother-of-pearl pegs and was made of zebra wood. It was also a lot more expensive, but things had been going well for me and I couldn't resist. I bought it, and suddenly I had a collection -- this is the famous "rule of three" that works the same in objects as in fiction. Lewis Carroll enunciated it best in "The Hunting of the Snark," but the principal was known to the ancients:
"Just the place for a Snark,"
the Bellman cried
As he landed his crew with care,
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark," I have said it twice.
That alone should encourage the crew.
"Just the place for a Snark," I have said it thrice
What I tell you three times is true.
And so it was true. Like various characters in my books, I have the Collector Gene and with three of these strange objects in a drawer, I became a collector. It wasn't until years later that I drew a picture of a piece from my collection and asked what they were of Dorothy Rodgers, the wife of composer Richard Rodgers and a hugely accomplished and interesting woman in her own right. Dorothy knew all kinds of odd things, and sure enough, she knew exactly what I had on my hands.
"They are whist counters, darling. I know because Noel Coward gave me a lovely ivory pair."
Whist? It is a card game, the precursor of bridge, and once an immensely popular game, played by everyone from Louis XV, Napoleon and Queen Victoria to Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S. Grant and Edgar Allen Poe. The Japanese artisans who crafted netsukes and inro turned their talents to making whist counters for the export market during the Meiji era, and these artifacts counters were even produced in the workshops of Carl Faberge.
I'm not a card player, but I love the craftsmanship of these counters, which have passed into such obscurity today that when I wrote to the bridge columnist of the New York Times, he not only had no idea how they were used to keep score -- he had never even heard of such things.
To continue this discussion and learn the difference between a Whist Counter and a Whist Marker, click
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Copyright by Charles Mathes. All rights reserved