The origins of the game ‘bilboquet’ are somewhat uncertain although there are documents placing the game as far back as 16th century France. Designed for one player, the game was supposedly invented to train children’s hand to eye co-ordination in hunting cultures with the intent being to throw a tethered object into the air and catch it on a pin. We know the bilboquet was particularly popular in the Royal courts of Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries through their depiction in paintings, one of which hangs in Mallett’s London gallery, A Portrait of the Masters Blair, by Thomas Beach, (signed and dated 1769) portraying Charles and Henry Blair, the Children of Charles Blair and Lady Mary Fane, in a wooded landscape holding a bilboquet. http://www.mallettantiques.com