Item Details:

THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS

D.P. & S.B. IVES, BOSTON/SALEM, MA

EARLY AMERICAN GAME, 1864

Chromolithographed Paper and Cardboard

Size: 18 1/4 x 14 5/8 in; 46.4 x 37.1 cm

The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement is a children's board game inspired by Christian morality. Players race about a 67-space spiral track depicting virtues and vices with their goal being the Mansion of Happiness at track's end. Instructions upon virtue spaces advance players toward the goal while those upon vice spaces force them to retreat.

It was first published in the United States by W. & S.B. Ives in Salem, Massachusetts on November 25, 1843. Their game was a folding game board with a cloth and cardboard pocket attached to the bottom of the game board along its edge. In the pocket were the rules, implements, and teetotum. Its teetotum was an ivory dowel sharpened to a point at the bottom end inserted in an octagonal ivory plate. This type of teetotum was referred to as a pin and plate teetotum.

When board games were published in 1843, morality was the most important aspect of the game. Since dice were called "the bones of the Devil" because they were used to determine which Roman soldier would keep Christ's loin cloth, teetotums were used instead. There were many different printings of Ives' The Mansion of Happiness.

Provenance: Private collection, New York City from whom the current owner obtained the work