Grabuge!

Included in this item:

• 1,664-card grabuge deck
• Mid Century Modern mechanical card shuffler
• In-person, half-day grabuge lesson with architectural historian James Papp anywhere within the state of California (or farther afield by Zoom)
• Afternoon tea served on Napoleonic-era china for your grabuge party (of up to ten)

Sybille Bedford, in her historical novel A Legacy, describes grabuge as a “game played by two people with one hundred and twenty-eight packs every single card of which is a spade. It is a kind of giant demon, an immensely elaborate simple game; and it takes all afternoon.”

Despite scholars having doubted the game’s existence, its earliest record of grabuge is George Sand playing it with her grandmother, Marie-Aurore de Saxe, in the latter’s château after the fall of the Napoleonic empire. James Papp of Historicities has succeeded in reconstructing the rules of the game from French and German sources and has also assembled the 1,664-card pack necessary to play it. He will travel anywhere in the State of California (or elsewhere by Zoom) to teach you during a full afternoon session—also serving afternoon tea on period Néo-Grec architectural china for your grabuge party (of up to ten). After the lesson, the Nestor Johnson shuffler, 1,664-card grabuge deck, and long-lost knowledge are yours to keep.

In the words of Caspar Gutman and Sam Spade:

“Nobody in all this whole wide sweet world knows what it is, saving and excepting your humble servant.”

“Swell. When you’ve told me there’ll only be two of us who know.”

If card lesson is by Zoom, James will send the items by mail ahead of time. James is located in San Luis Obispo, but ready to travel within the state to teach you this historic card game!