Double-Sided Checkerboard

Double-sided checkerboard in bittersweet and black paint.

The front of the board is carefully laid out with borders and corner blocks while the back/underside is framed with  stretcher boards. Both sides make clever use of unpainted pine as a third color and both differ in the way they use the paint.

The playing field of the back/underside also features the pasted numbers that are common to so-called “correspondence boards” and would have helped two friends play a game by mail.

Late 19th century.