Two rare versions of the Game of the Goose, the one offering a sweeping panorama of trades and professions, the other showcasing the natural and man-made wonders of the world.

The Game of the Goose is a very old form of roll-and-move game, which probably first appeared in the 16^th century and soon spread through Europe.  The simple playing area usually features 63 numbered spaces arranged in a spiral track, the numbers ascending as one progresses from the periphery to the interior.  Players move their pieces according to the roll of dice, with the winner being whoever first reaches the sixty-third space.  Variety is added along the way by spaces granting bonus moves, assigning penalties, and so on.  The sheer simplicity of the format makes the game almost infinitely adaptable, and thousands of variants have appeared over the centuries: As of this writing the Ciompi-Seville database on the subject lists a whopping 3204 titles!.

Offered here is a matched pair of engraved Game of the Goose boards issued by the house of Basset in Paris, each mounted on linen and folding into the same custom slipcase. Both are visually striking and, well, fun.

The first features 63 pictorial vignettes of memorable sites, both natural and man-made. Most are in Europe but there is representation from Africa (pyramids, the Sphinx, the colossi at Thebes, the Cataracts of the Nile) and the Near East (the Maronite Convent at Mount Lebanon the ruins at Palmyra), and token appearances by Asia (a Chinese pagoda), North America (Niagara Falls), the oceans (a waterspout), and space (the Aurora Borealis). The designer must have had a particular affinity for French ports, as Bordeaux, Rochefort, La Rochelle, Brest, Orient. St. Malo, Cherbourg, Dieppe, Calais, Dunkirk, Marseille, and Toulon together occupy almost 20 percent of the spaces.

The second game highlights the great range of human occupations, ranging from the productive (farmers, a baker, a coopers, and carpenters) to the performative (a marionettist, acrobats, a harpist, actors, and musicians) to the professional (lawyers, physicians, and an architect) and even the academic (a physicist, a geometrician, a geographer, an astronomer, and a chemist). The prominent spaces 60, 61, and 62 are dedicated respectively to letterpress printing, copperplate engraving, and copperplate printing.

References
Adrian Seville and Luig Ciompi, “Giochi dell’Oca d di percorso” (at www.giochidelloca.it), #636 (“Industrie Humaine”) and #202 (“Merveilles”). As of September 2026 OCLC 80944261 and 82151645 locate only two holdings of “Merveilles” (Getty Institute and Canadian Centre for Architecture); and no holdings of “Industrie Humaine.”