Cribbage Boxes
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 waited a long time before it found Cribbage boards of sufficiently high quality. We know that you can buy cheap and nasty Cribbage boards all over the place. To produce something completely unique, we have commissioned an experience marquetry craftsman to make some inlaid Cribbage boxes to a high standard.
You won't find the crib boxes on this page anywhere else. What better gift for the games enthusiast who has everything - or indeed any lover of fine wooden objects?
Inlaid Cribbage Boxes
Each box opens out on a material hinge with no visible external protuberance. The storage holes for the pegs also serve to lock the closed box into position. The pegs are made from solid polished brass.
The
internal surface into which the holes are bored is made from Horse Chestnut
wood and the box is lined with finest quality Jenillesuede. The exterior
of the Cribbage box is faced with Yew wood with the option of two different
decorative central squares on the box top - either 'Walnut Burr' or 'Masur
Birch'.
Open dimensions are 255 x 125 x 19mm (10 x 5 x 3/4 inch) and each Cribbage box comes with a pack of Waddington linen-finished playing cards and Cribbage rules that fit neatly inside the box.
These boxes are handmade in England. 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.
Click on the picture to enlarge.
|
Walnut Burr |
Masur Birch |
Change to $  Change to  |
UK pounds (ex.VAT) |
Pounds (incl. VAT) |
Typical ETA in wkg days |
Add to basket |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hand Made Cribbage Box - Walnut Burr top |
£68.00 | £79.90 | 2 + transit time | ||
Hand Made Cribbage Box - Masur Birch top |
£68.00 | £79.90 | 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.