Image courtesy: Leiden American Pilgrims Museum - Leiden, The Netherlands, public domain
Hi-Res image: Leiden American Pilgrims Museum
Children’s games changed little through the centuries, often relying on imaginary play or some simple equipment. Many of the games familiar today—such as tag, marbles, hopscotch, rope jumping or ball games—were already well known in Europe long before the 17 century. Carried across the Atlantic by the Dutch settlers, these pastimes were brought to the New World, where they continued to entertain children much as they had generations before.
These charming Delft blue and white tiles depict many scenes of children at play, offering a glimpse into daily life at the time. They show a wide variety of games, from kids flying kites to skipping rope, or, as illustrated here, playing a game of marbles or knucklebones, competing on stilts, or rolling the hoop.
These playfully illustrated tiles served as durable surface protections, decorating hearths, walls, and staircases both in Amsterdam and New Amsterdam houses alike, including the Kierstede family home in Pearl street. The tile illustrations also had hidden lessons that reflected contemporary moral and cultural values, pointing both at the innocence and fleeting nature of childhood. These attractive tiles combined utility with decoration and storytelling, serving as durable coverings while preserving for posterity the many happy children’s pastimes in an ages gone by.
Leiden American Pilgrims Museum, summary:
John Robinson, the Pilgrims' minister, warned against treating children like “little adults;” they should not be made "men and women, before they become good boys and girls," he said. Many children began training as future housewives or laborers from a relatively young age - eight or nine years old. But children were not expected to spend all day working. Seventeenth-century depictions of children playing show us a wide variety of toys, ranging from dolls and toy soldiers, through hoops, jump-ropes, whirligigs, hobby-horses, tops, toy drums, and balls. Tobacco pipes were borrowed from smokers for blowing soap bubbles.
Children also played golf and flew kites, not to mention the occasional winter sport of skating. Poor children could skate by tying large sheep bones under their shoes to serve as runners. Many different group-games were played as well, such as varieties of marbles and knuckle-bone throwing. Although only one toy belonging to a Pilgrim child has survived - the whistle that was probably a teething toy, inscribed E.W., found at the site of Edward Winslow's house in Marshfield, Plymouth Colony - we can assume that Pilgrim children played the games common to the time [excerpted from Bangs, Strangers and Pilgrims, Travelers and Sojourners, pp. 389, 404].
Reference:
Location: Leiden Pilgrim Museum, Leiden, The Netherlands https://pieterskerk.com/pilgrimmuseum/
Date: ca. 1640-50
Dimension: Size · 5 1/8" x 5 1/8" x 3/8" (13 x 13 x 0.9 cm)