There are two basic type of whist counters: the Goodall type and the De La Rue (plus variants). The Goodall counters are vastly more common, due to their superior materials and their classically simple, sturdy design -- functionally elegant enough to warrant inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art design collection in the opinion of at least one expert (me).
Charles Goodall (1785-1851), came to London from Northampton, and was apprenticed to J.W. Hunt, an old and established playing card manufacturer, in 1801. Eventually Goodall and his two sons would be making most of the playing cards used in Great Britain. In 1862 the company also issued the first commercially produced Christmas cards.
The Goodall factory was located in the Camden town area of London (also home of the Bob Crachit family of Dickens' A Christmas Carol) and Camden became the name of its signature whist marker (its earlier markers were "dial" types made of cardboard or leather). The Camden came in a variety of woods: ebony, walnut, rosewood and satinwood, with either wood or ivory pegs -- or "turnups" as Goodall called them.
The Camden, the tiny Tom Thumb (1 x 2 inches) and the ubiquitous Pall Mall models all made use of an integral hidden hinge that had been invented by a Scottish genius, James Sandy (1766-1819) for use in snuff boxes and tea caddies. Goodall was not the first to apply this hinge to a game counter (a Frenchman had patented a design for Piquet counters in 1866 - see Great Peg Count Mystery), but it is here that it was perfected.
The Goodall counters pictured above show the words, "Entered at Stationers Hall," meaning that they had been awarded the British equivalent of a copyright or patent. Both the Camden and the Pall Mall were registered on August 29, 1888, though an earlier Camden, probably of cardboard, was patented on 11 September, 1867 (we know this because Goodall descendent, Mike Goodall has generously shared his research - thanks, Mike!).
Ironically the vast majority of Goodall type whist counters bear no labels from Goodall and Son. While Goodall did sell counters to retailers who marketed them anonymously, it's also likely that the design was widely stolen. British registration only gave a few years of protection, and knockoffs soon flooded the market, many from the Orient, just as designer goods are counterfeited today.
Thomas de la Rue (1793-1866), like Charles Goodall, was also a printer. Born in Guernsey, he was apprenticed at the age of ten to his brother-in-law, a master printer. In 1818 he moved to London with his family and set up shop as a paper manufacturer. Horning in on Goodall's territory he soon took away a substantial portion of the British playing card business. The upstart De La Rue also began printing bank notes and postage stamps for the UK and colonies.
De La Rue not only had a wide business vision and a penchant for quality (the best engravers and miniature designers worked for De La Rue). Thanks to the research of French card expert Thierry Depaulis I now know that De La Rue was the first to come up with designs for whist markers other than the round ones with spinning hands.
A patent for the "Cavendish" Whist Marker below was granted to Henry Jones ("Cavendish") and William Frederick De La Rue on 23rd June 1868 (No.1057, filed 27 March 1868), much earlier than the Goodall type markers which only came in after 1888.
I call these "De La Rue type" markers, but De La Rue cleverly named his new design "The Cavendish" after a celebrity of the day: Cavendish was the the nom de plume of the author of several influential books on cards, and naming the counter after him was the equivalent of a modern endorsement by a sports star (it was a different world then, wasn't it?).
The Cavendish was made of thin layers of wood or enameled cardboard, held together by rivets. Fat and skinny tabs (equivalent to Goodall's fat and skinny snap-up pegs) slid out of the body. While the design demonstrated creativity and has a certain elegance, it lacked the universal, timeless appeal of Goodall's markers. To modern eyes it looks distinctly old-fashioned, positively Victorian in fact. Because the tabs were so thin they easily broke off. Though the counters were colorful when they were new, the cardboard bodies soiled easily. It is not difficult to understand why few De La Rue types can be found today (for some wonderful examples in great condition, visit the Bruno Sacerdoti's marvelous collection at the Bridge Plaza Museum).
De la Rue also came up with other interesting designs, and the creativity involved in some of these attempts -- which I call De La Rue Variants -- was striking. Take a look at this model, also made of enameled cardboard, where instead of tabs that could be torn off, the game and trick points were revealed by pivoting cardboard flaps
This counter (a patent for which was granted to Jones and De La Rue on 21st January 1871 according to Thierry Depaulis) further reveals De La Rue's creativity and innovation in that only four game points are presented. After all, once the fifth point was won, the game was over. Did you really need to flip up a peg or reveal a final dot at that point (no pun intended)?
Another innovative design was De La Rue's "Klik" counter. This variant had spring-loaded brass tabs which shot out of the sides like miniature horizontal guillotines when you pressed the brass buttons on top. Note that this counter has seven fat pegs and three skinny ones, which means that it was made to score American whist, a game which played to seven points rather than short whist's five. (In 1897 there were 31,733 members of the American Whist League, so this was a lucrative market.)
Decades later, Goodall also came up with innovations. Perhaps stung by the widespread piracy of its original design (or maybe the patent had expired), in 1892 Goodall registered a design for another whist counter, the "Foster." The Foster, like De La Rue's Cavendish, was named after another celebrity whist author, R.F. Foster.
Mudie and Son, which specialized in card paraphernalia, sold this particular model with Goodall's name on it at first.
not part of my collectionBy 1900, however, this advertisement which appeared in the back of Foster's Whist Manual, Fifth Edition, makes it appear as though the patent belonged to Mudie, rather than Goodall. Had Goodall sold the design and gotten out of the business or had the patent just expired (most British patents of the time lasted just three years) letting Mudie, the former customer, appropriate the design?
Both Goodall and De La Rue also produced less expensive counters in cardboard or leather with pointers that indicated the progress of the game, patterned after the older round long whist counters in brass and ivory. The leather pair below illustrate the reason why many of the brass long whist counters bear registration dates of 1860, long after short whist had replaced the older game of long whist -- why replace perfectly good counters when you could use them to count to five just as well as all the way to ten?
The era of Whist Counters was a short one, however. While whist was still played into the 20th century and these counters were still used, Bridge Whist became the rage in London in 1894. By 1908 -- a mere twenty years after Goodall had registered the Camden Whist Counter -- R.F. Foster, the aforementioned whist authority after whom Goodall had even named a counter, was publishing books about the successor to Bridge Whist: Auction (later Contract) Bridge, a game with scoring that was too complicated to keep track of with pegged counters. Whist counters were relegated to attics and collections.
Happily the whist counters manufacturers didn't go the way of buggy whip makers. Both companies still had their playing card businesses and a linked destiny. De La Rue absorbed Goodall in 1922 and today is largest commercial security printer and papermaker in the world: www.delarue.com
