Item Details:

CHIROMAGICA

MCLOUGHLIN BROTHERS, NEW YORK CITY

EARLY AMERICAN GAME, 1872

Chromolithographed Paper on Wood and Cardboard

Size: 11.75 x 11.75 in; 29.8 x 29.8 cm

The company’s Chiromagica toy was offered for more than a decade, starting around 1872, and was heavily promoted in its trade catalogs and advertisements during that time. Controlled by carefully placed magnets, players asked this fortune-telling game questions and then placed discs on the glass-topped board—the pointer would magically spin to reveal the correct answer. The game was not inexpensive, selling for two dollars in 1879. In 1894, one copy was owned by a boys’ club in New Haven, Connecticut, run by a minister who wrote about the homeless street boys that he served, “They are reading good books, and the games are in all cases innocent and in some cases helpful, such as the dissected maps and Chiromagica, which is a wheel answering questions in geography, history, etc.

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