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Victorian Lucky Pig Roulette Pendant

Victorian Lucky Pig Roulette Pendant

$1,950.00

Description

DATE: Victorian, c.1890

This cool Victorian novelty pendant is modelled as a hairy lucky pig holding a spinning roulette wheel, its tail taking the place of the ball to denote the winning number. Basically a portable roulette wheel, allowing you (and your friends) to engage in your favourite vice anywhere and anytime (just make sure as the owner, you pick up the bank's zeros for yourself). The pig is beautifully textured and set with garnet eyes, while the wheel is finely enamelled with the typical red and black colour segments and tiny numerals. It's French, crafted in silver gilt throughout, and dates from the late 19th century, circa 1890.

One of the most iconic casino games to this day, roulette is thought to have been invented - in a rudimentary form - by Blaise Pascal during the course of his 17th century search for a perpetual motion machine. The first instance of roulette, as we know it today, was devised in 18th century France, using a hybrid gaming mechanism invented in 1720, and derived from the Italian game Biribi. An early description of the game in its current form can be found in the novel La Roulette, ou le Jour, by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. Roulette wheels found in the casinos of Paris in the latter years of the 18th century used red for single zero, and black for double zero (the zeroes being where the casinos made their money), however the zero colours were changed to green around the year 1800, apparently to avoid confusion. 

MEASUREMENTS 

3.0 x 1.9cm

WEIGHT 

10.7g

MARKS 

French control marks

CONDITION 

Very good, some general wear to the gilding commensurate with age. Enamel is in excellent condition

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