the teeny tiny table games

There's 10 of them now.  10!

How did this happen?  A Redgrave bagatelle had been on my wantlist for a while.  Then shortly after I discovered an auction in the UK for a scaled-down bar billiards table at a good price, and I had to go for it.  I do not think that the Singer bagatelle will be sticking around.

For the sake of discussing them, I will number them.  Tables number 1, 2, 5, 6, and 10 are all miniature / toy versions of tables that are regularly full-sized, usually 7-10 feet in length.  Tables 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 are all made for the home parlor / toy market.

1. Cockamaroo: Seems to have began early 1800s.  Left and right shooter lane, and uses a cue or mace for both.  Place a King Ball at the top dot, and then there are 6 cups to land in on the way down, plus scoring columns along the bottom.
2. Pin bagatelle with plunger, first seen mid 1800s.  An example of how bells were introduced into the game.  Dual shooting lanes, with one for the plunger, one for shooting with a cue.  There is no King Ball spot here.
3. 1876 Redgrave bagatelle.  First USA patented coiled spring plunger from the front of the table, the way we now know with contemporary pinball.
4. Singer bagatelle: different style of plunger to avoid Redgrave's patent.  This has scoring slots along the bottom, a remnant from cockamaroo that would disappear by the 20th century.
5. 9-hole English bagatelle:  the classic English Bagatelle layout, 1 center cup encircled by 8 others.  Still played within some parts of the UK and USA.
6. Japanese rolling ball table: by 1870 there were variants of the English Bagetelle table sold that had cups in multiple lines.  In Japan, early meiji era, tables like this were used for ball rolling, and points exchanged for prizes.  This is the birth of modern redemption arcades.
7. Japanese rolling ball toy:  After the success of Japanese Rolling Ball in the USA, toy versions were sold from the 1900s to 1950s, though only some models had references to the Japanese origin.
8. Poolette: post-ww2 bagatelle toy from Japan, similar to Corinthian tables popular in the early 30s
9. 20th century bagatelle toy from the UK.  Corinthian style board, but with springed plunger and bakelite (maybe) plastic surface.
10. Bar Billiards: supposed "arriving from the Dutch" in the 1930s, bar billiards is still popular in parts of the UK today, as well as in a few other countries.  Sometimes referred to as "Russian Billiards", the game has under-table troughs to bring sunk balls to the labeled point slots at the front.

bar billiards

I am moving all of my bar billiards notes into a single post.  (It previously had bounced around as a sub-category in other posts.)

Bar Billiards

 

I had moved Bar Billiards with the Pigeon Hole tables at first, since the template for it arrived around the same time as Pigeon Hole tables were popular.  Now it's here on its own.  You can see a prior post with a good video on bar billiards.

It apparently came to the UK via Belgium (as Russian Billiards?) circa 1930s, but that's a highly suspect history considering the precursor tables with the same layout and features existed in 1880, and then the trough that returns balls to the front appeared with Klondike Pool.

The game had playfield holes and troughs let the balls roll to the front, making it perfect for a bar where surrounding space was limited.  The player always shoots from the front.

It is a 20th century game so I won't be spending much time on it, but I would like to see if there is evidence to better trace the 19th century tables to the present-day bar billiards machines.

It is also lays forth the inspiration for the "totalizer", a key innovation in the development of pinball in 1933.

Are we going to just rest on the story that "bar billiards came from Belgium around 1930" when this existed in the USA in 1872?

Jenny Lind table in the 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

some more bagatelle notes

In this post I am going to be dumping references to bagatelle from some newspapers.  Many of these clips I'll later sift into the more overarching posts on this topic.  (will this post disappear if I integrate stuff into older posts on these topics?  Unsure...)

Below the cut you'll find information on bagatelle, russian billiards, bar billiards, etc

Doing a search through New York Historic Newspapers, the earliest mention of bagatelle to mean a game (on that site) seems to be 1819.

1819-08-17 Lansingburgh Gazette 

(if I go to your house and you have bagatelles and aeolian harps, I'll be very impressed)

on naming the bagatelles

It is hard to definitively understand the world of billiard variants.  The game(s) travelled the world many times over, some names were only used in certain regions, some regional-sounding names were given with little-to-no connection to those territories, and many times historical sources would naively swap names around.

This is another work-in-progress post where I'm going to try and collect some details, but I propose a singular takeaway: LET'S STOP CALLING THINGS "BAGATELLE".  Please?  Bagatelle is a toy home pinball game, it's a musical number, it's a literal TRIFLE synonym, it's a billiard board, it's an antique pin board, it's enough things.   Let's be more specific.

Quick summary of the styles I'm interested in:

9-hole bagatelle / English Bagatelle:  long and thin tables where you shoot from one end to pocket balls in the 9 shallow holes on the playfield.  These tables come up for sale somewhat regularly in the UK, and the folding versions come up occasionally in USA.  You don't often see it referenced as "9-hole bagatelle" but I am calling it that because it's explicitly descriptive.
My entry on 9-hole English bagatelle

Pin Bagatelle / French bagatelle / Parisian bagatelle / Russian Bagatelle / cockamaroo: a slanted table where balls are shot up a channel and then fall down through pins/pegs.  Full-sized tables of this type seem to be very rare / obscure, with smaller toy-sized versions being rather common.  Features like shooting method, playfield gimmicks, and score holes vary, and I use "pin bagatelle" as an overarching category covering these variants.
My entry on pin bagatelle / French bagatelle

Klondike Pool / Tivoli Table / American Bagatelle / Manhattan: very similar to other pin bagatelles, except it employs a holes and a trough system to delivery the balls to the front.  Pretty obscure, but at least some copies are known to exist.  Late 19th century, and primarily American.
My entry on pin bagatelles includes a section on Klondike Pool

Japanese Rolling Ball / Tamakorogashi (玉ころがし) / Billard Japonais / Japanese Billiards: a long table like 9-hole bagatelle, but with holes arranged in rows and given a larger range of point values.  Typically the end of the table is rounded, but sometimes it is rectangular.  No cue is used, balls are rolled by hand.  Many home-made ones exist due to their ease of construction, especially in parts of Europe where it still has popularity as a fair game.
My entry on Japanese Rolling Ball

Pigeon Hole / Trou Madam / Parepa:  has holes to shoot through at one end.  Many 9-hole tables also had an add-on to make it a pigeon-hole table.  Dedicated tables of this type are very rare / obscure, especially the angled Parepa tables.  Pigeon-hole is more often played on English Bagatelle tables by inserting a wooden bridge.
The dedicated Pigeon Hole tables have a trough under the playfield that returns the balls to the front of the table, same as bar billiards.

My entry on pigeon hole / trou madam / bar billiards

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

Most billiard tables can be converted to a table like this by adding a wooden arch made to fit across the narrow cross-section of the playfield.  The game Trou Madam, dating to the 16th century, can have arches like this, and games like Mississippi are played in this manner.

Carombolette:  a variant of pigeon-hole that adds a pin-bagatelle feature on the other side of the gates.  These are very rare / obscure.  The stopper pictured below would allow the table to be played purely as a pigeon hole table.
My entry on carombolette

Bar billiards / Jenny Lind / Russian Billiards: Balls are shot from the front and into holes which channel the balls back to the front of the table.  Played with "skittles" (wooden pieces) on the playfield to avoid.  Common, still made and played today.
My entry on bar billiards
some videos on bar billiards

Jenny Lind Table - holes in the table direct balls to trough at the front
1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog 

Some other table games:

Toupie Hollandaise: no strong connection to billiards or bagatelle, but I'm including because people often lump these in with antique bagatelles.  It has skittles on a flat playfield, to be knocked over by a spinning top.  Also exists as a children's versions.
My entry on Toupie Hollandaise

Bowling Naco:  balls are rolled down and their angle modified by changing the shooter's angle.  Exists as a large parlor game, very popular in children's toys, and also exists as coin-op games.  Including here because it was made into a coin-op game in the 1930s around the time when pin bagatelle went coin-op too.

bagatelle notes: pin bagatelles / French bagatelle / Klondike Pool

Here we have the innovation that truly scratches the gambler's itch:  the entire table is slanted, ensuring the balls always roll down towards the player, and introduces a strong element of chance.

These designs would be imitated by the toy bagatelles of the 1800s, which would eventually include a spring plunger in the 2nd half of the 19th century. (citations needed!)

Previous entries in this series include bagatelle notes, and carombolette notes.

These slanted tables tend to also get called bagatelle interchangeably with the flat billiard-style ones, which is why I like say "pin bagatelle" as the overarching category.   AFAIK there was never any steadfast naming convention, which mirrors billiards whole convoluted history, rife with variants of design and rules.

According to Bueschel's Encyclopedia of Pinball, it was "cockamaroo" that added the left channel and the scoring pockets along the bottom, but it's quite rare to find tables that don't have them.  

CHEVROT & LE BON

F 101, Avenue Montaigne Paris Très belle table de Billard chinois Placage de palissandre vernis, métal et bronze doré France, Paris, fin du XXème siècle Nous y joignons une queue de billard et des billes en bois (restaurations à la partie recevant les billes) Haut.: 103 cm - Larg.: 86 cm - Prof.: 105 cm Inventaire de la collection n°686 Modèle similaire à celui livré en 1862 pour le Salon des Cartes au château de Compiègne. Un autre exemplaire est conservé au château de Fontainebleau. Ce jeux à l'origine de salon sera par la suite exploité par les forains Very beautiful Chinese Billiards table - Varnished rosewood veneer, gold metal and bronze - Billiard queues and balls included (restoration for recipient) - H: 40" W: 33" D: 22" DM
cornettedesaintcyr

Oh will you look at that ornamental gate with the ball and drawbridge!  Incredibly cute.  Also a rather expensive table.

a note on bar billiards

Just because I've been on an "evolution of bagatelle" kick, I watched some bar billiards videos and thought the disparity of them was pretty funny.

For amateurs?  Bar billiards seems tonnes of fun.  Check this great explainer and demonstration video:

For pros?  Wow, if this isn't the most boring thing to watch.  They need a rule where if the playfield is empty, a ball must touch the cushion once for your shot to be validated.

Added 2025-03-19: