![Item #JCHE001 [Reward of merit engraving, featuring a game of wicket ball in Connecticut, c. 1821]. John Cheney.](https://bbrarebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/JCHE001.jpeg?width=768&height=1000&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1776893957)
[Reward of merit engraving, featuring a game of wicket ball in Connecticut, c. 1821]
Price: $8,500.00
Engraving. [Connecticut]: [c. 1821]. First Edition. Very Good.
6 3/8" x 4" engraving tipped onto a rectangular sheet measuring 10 ¾" x 6 7/8". Black and white engraving depicting a group of boys playing wicket ball on a town green, with reward of merit caption, names of the recipient and her teacher penned in brown ink, tipped onto a tan rectangular sheet of paper. Very good or better, with light spotting and some small chips to edges, a vertical crease to upper center, and some edgewear to tan paper with a two tape remnants to verso. Overall, a superb example of this scarce engraving, depicting an early incarnation of baseball. John Thorn, the Official Baseball Historian for the MLB since 2011, claims that "Wicket was the game of our forefathers … Wicket was the game George Washington played at Valley Forge." The game is believed by many historians to have been an early form of cricket, imported from England by English settlers in the 17th century and played into the 19th century. The game "was one of a number of bat-and-ball games played by Americans in the era before baseball. New England was the heart of wicket country, with Western Massachusetts and especially Connecticut serving as strongholds of the game" (Litchfield Society). In Thorn's article, "The Oldest Wicket Game, Newly Found" (2013), he outlines the extensive research that he conducted after coming across a reward of merit engraving nearly identical to this one (though with the image reversed). He found an entry for the image in Sylvester Rosa Koehler's Catalogue of the Engraved and Lithographed Work of John Cheney and Seth Wells Cheney (1891), dated 1821, described in the following way: "Six boys or young men in shirt-sleeves are playing ball. The ball is in the air in the middle of the sky. At the left two lookers-on are seated on a log, on the right stands another. On the extreme left part of a large tree is seen, on the right a grove of poplars. In the background a school-house, a church, and other houses, two poplars, bushes and a hill. Octagon, oblong, surrounded by two fine lines, with a heavier one between them." Thorn also cites a passage from Memoir of John Cheney (1889), written by Ednah Dow Cheney (John Cheney's sister-in-law) that references the wicket ball engraving: "[John] studied engraving from an encyclopedia, and made a printing-press before he had ever seen an Engraver. He cut a piece from an old copper kettle and engraved on it a sketch of boys playing ball, to be used for a Reward of Merit. This plate still exists." Thorn confirms the setting of the image to be an area of Manchester, Connecticut that John Cheney grew up in. Reward of Merit tickets, akin to prize bindings, were printed items given to children for strong school performance and often illustrated with a wide range of subjects. Examples listed on OCLC date from 1819 through the 1820s, making them notable artifacts of early American printing. This wicket ball engraving is recorded in three holdings: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and a private collection. John Cheney (1801-1885) was known during his lifetime as "one of the finest engravers working in America" (Smithsonian American Art Museum). He engraved portrait heads and scenes and produced a series of engravings for finely bound "gift books" between 1820 and 1850. Item #JCHE001
