Inlaid Cribbage Boards
The only card game that can legally be played for money in English pubs, Cribbage requires the use of a scoring board which appears to have been in existence long before the invention of Cribbage itself and may be descended from game boards used in Ancient Egypt.
Masters Traditional Games has waited a long time to source Cribbage boards of sufficient quality. We know that you can buy cheap and nasty Cribbage boards all over the place so we get ours hand-made by an experienced Marquetry craftshop. The boards are available in various surface inlays, all of which emphasise the beauty of natural wood.
Click on the picture to enlarge.
The Cribbage Boards ares supplied with 4 solid brass pegs that are stored inside the board and secured with a screw cap that is also made from solid brass. You won't find the boards on this page anywhere else. What better gift for the games enthusiast who has everything - or indeed any lover of fine wooden objects?
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Oak Burr |
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Pippy Oak Burr |
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Elm Burr |
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Yew Burr |
These cribbage boards are handmade in England. Boards measure approx
27 x 9cm. As with all handmade products, tiny imperfections and variance
in colours may exist. The pegs represent a choking hazard and so this
product is not suitable for young children.
Change to $  Change to  |
UK pounds (ex.VAT) |
Pounds (incl. VAT) |
Typical ETA in wkg days |
Add to basket |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hand Made Cribbage Board (Oak Burr) |
£53.53 | £62.90 | 2 + transit time | ||
Hand Made Cribbage Board (Pippy Oak Burr) |
£53.53 | £62.90 | 2 + transit time | ||
Hand Made Cribbage Board (Elm Burr) |
£53.53 | £62.90 | 2 + transit time | ||
Hand Made Cribbage Board (Yew Burr) |
£53.53 | £62.90 | 2 + transit time | ||
For an immediate quote and ETA, add to the basket & select your location. |
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The History of Cribbage
The invention of Cribbage, Crib for short, was attributed to the poet Sir John Suckling (1609 - 1642) by his biographer, John Aubrey. Suckling was something of a scoundrel by all accounts. He was an expert at cards, dice and bowls as well as being a womaniser and notorious wit on top of his poetry day-job! His most notorious feat was began when he distributed large numbers of packs of marked cards to the aristocratic populace around England. He then followed up this preparation by going around the country playing the local gentry at Cribbage for money, managing to earn himself around £20,000 (about £4 million in today's money).
There's no hard evidence to show that Suckling was the inventor of Cribbage and it seems to be suspiciously similar to an earlier game played in Tudor times called Noddy, the rules for which aren't entirely clear.
A standard Cribbage board is a lesson in functional simplicity. Each player moves a pair of pegs up the outside and down the inside of their side of the board. The front peg shows the current score while the rear peg shows the previous score - a device that efficiently prevents mistakes and allows opponents to curtail any surreptious cheating. The holes are clearly divided into sets of five, a fact that allows large scores to be tallied immediately without counting and means that a quick glance is all that is needed to determine who is winning and by how much. A complete trip up and down the board is 60 holes but each end has a finishing hole into which the winning peg is placed. Thus, games scored using a Cribbage board are usually first to 61, 121 or 181.