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

the materials are invariably thoughtful and smart

with a nice red velvet-covered writing slope inside

amplifying a sense of sisterhood

I'm not at all a photography expert

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.