[Reward of Merit. Engraving featuring a game of wicket in Connecticut.]

£3,750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A lovely, early image of the American game of wicket - or wicket ball - developed from the English game, cricket, and the precursor to baseball. The game is recorded as being played in the late eighteenth century (at Valley Forge including George Washington, no less) and into the nineteenth century. “Wicket, or wicket ball, 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. There is little definitive history on the origin of the game. Most historians agree that wicket began as an early form of cricket imported to New England by English settlers sometime in the late seventeenth century. (2) Some speculate that cricket “savored so much of the English aristocracy” that the settlers of New England gradually changed the game’s features, shaping a primitive version of England’s national pastime into a uniquely American sport” (Litchfield Society). This image was engraved by John Cheney (1801-85) who was born in Connecticut and taught himself the art of engraving before working professionally in that trade from 1829. His sister-in-law, Ednah Dow, wrote a memoir of him describing his self-education and early efforts which seemingly include this piece: “He 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

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