Old Maid Prize, Black Ink Drawing Signed F.A, 1892 handmade jackstraws It features beautiful Spencerian +

It features beautiful Spencerian + Fraktur headers throughout plus tons of geometric diagrams carefully drawn with compass and ruler

amplifying a sense of sisterhood

it was somewhat tarnished when I found it

the materials are invariably thoughtful and smart

About 50 marbles--exactly as shown

Old Maid Prize, Black Ink Drawing Signed F.A, 1892 handmade jackstraws It features beautiful Spencerian +At first I thought this antique merit award type drawing was a snarky, or tongue in cheek portrait of an old spinster, which, as a happily unmarried woman in her late 40's, appealed to me personally, but then I realized it was surely a prize for the winner of what must have been a fierce Old Maid card game, or maybe long stretch of games. And indeed, Old Maid in its current incarnation dates to the early 1880s, popular in England as well as in the U.