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A bit of Table Tennis history |
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Shown here is the original Gossima
set from John Jaques & Son Ltd from 1891 - the first "real"
table tennis set ever manufactured. It features a wooden box; a pair of
size 2 (17.5 inches) battledores; a cork ball 2 inches in diameter and
covered in netting for the protection of the dining-room porcelain; a pair
of posts and a net (40 inches by 12 inches).
The method of securing the net is interesting: you will see that there is a white tape which is tied underneath the table. Therefore it would have been necessary for three people to have been employed to achieve this! This photograph is of the set in Gerald Gurney's collection and was taken at his exhibition at the 1998 World Veterans' Championships, Manchester, England. Only one other set of Gossima is known (as distinct from sets bearing the name Ping-Pong or Gossima, which are common) and that is in a cardboard box. |
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TABLE TENNIS POSTCARDS by Graham Trimming In the November edition of the VETTS Newsletter I noted that there was a copy of a postcard dating from the turn of the last century. With it was posed the question "Has anyone got an original postcard?" I am delighted the say that my own collection of table tennis antiques from the pre-World War I era, which includes boxed sets and other equipment, prints and books, also includes a large number of picture postcards.
A few years ago Hans Kreischer kindly furnished me with a copy of the excellent "Catalogus Ansichtkaarten - Tafel Tennis 1900-1918" which features every known table tennis postcard for that era. For the period 1901 to 1905 alone there are 100 entries, mostly but not exclusively British, listed in this publication. My own collection includes over 50 of these, acquired mainly from spasmodic visits during the past several years to a monthly postcard collectors' fair in London.
The Galyon cards are quite hard to find; much more common are the Raphael Tuck "write away" cards, beautifully drawn and coloured by Lance Thackeray and chromographed in Saxony. It is one of these cards that is reproduced in the November newsletter. Altogether there were thirteen Thackerays, two series of six (623 and 624) and one card that was part of set 642. Even though these cards can be readily found (although it may take a few years to complete the set) they can still command prices of up to £25 each.
I know that there are others within the VETTS membership that share my interest in the sport's heritage and several of these have postcards in their collections. I hope that others might be enthused to start collecting as there are antique fairs and specialist postcard fairs up and down the country and not just in London. Happy hunting!
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The publication of all the articles above have been kindly permitted by Graham Trimming. click here to visit his homepage |
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The
early 1900s are often described as the halcyon days for the picture
postcard and they were then a new and important means of communication,
prior to the days of (mass) motor transport, telecommunications (and the
internet!). Many greetings cards depicted table tennis scenes, mainly in a
humorous vein. The early cards had little room for the sender to write
much as one side of the card was required to be used for the address only,
therefore any message had to be written on the same side as the
illustration. Only from 1902 was the divided back permitted, thus allowing
messages to be written in the now familiar space.
The
first cards to be produced were a set of twelve from the publisher Galyon.
The quality of the card used was nothing special and the black ink line
drawings were hand coloured. These were party invitation cards typically
carrying a message such as "We are having Ping-Pong on _________ at
___ o'clock. Do join us". The sender was required to fill in the
gaps. The introduction of these cards was noted in the fourth edition of
"The Table Tennis and Pastimes Pioneer" published on 8th
February 1902. However, the earliest date known to me for one of these
cards is 15th December 1901, a time when Ping-Pong was becoming
the craze as an after dinner amusement at the larger houses, clubs were
starting the spring up around the country and the first tournaments were
being organised.
There
are many other interesting sets for the determined collector to find.
William Lyon produced the Premier 1975 series of six cards of comic scenes
annotated by quotations from Shakespeare and the same publisher produced
coloured line drawings depicting players in evening dress in the Premier
2020 series. Raphael Tuck, the most respected of postcard publishers at
the time, also produced a series entitled "Ping Pong in
Fairyland" depicting elves playing table tennis on toadstool tables
with cobweb nets and leaves for bats. Gordon Browne drew a series of four
cards for John Walker while E. Wrench published two cartoons from the
satirical magazine "Punch". There are also cards from South
Africa depicting native (and topless) women playing on rickety tables (one
of these was also previously included in the VETTS Newsletter), these same
pictures being found on a number of different postcards, and many single
cards from various publishers including a Christmas card drawn by the
famous cat artist Louis Wain.