Tambourine – André Cornet – Drawings – Folk Art – 19th Century – Tambourine Ball

A rare tambourine with a leather head painted with various subjects: a one-legged soldier, a man playing the horn and walking his dog, a moth-like insect, a street painter, a child wearing a dunce cap, a suit of medieval armor, and a large profile portrait of a woman. In the center is the name Cornet, engraved twice on the wood of the tambourine as well as on the back of the leather head. A rare tambourine for the game of tambourine ball. Made in the second half of the 19th century. 20 cm in diameter, 4.5 cm thick. The game of tambourine ball is similar to jeu de paume (real tennis), but without a net. It is directly descended from the ball game played in Languedoc between the mid-16th century and 1861. In that year, a cooper from Mèze developed the first tambourines, consisting of a wooden hoop over which a parchment skin was stretched. The players then abandoned the wooden armbands used until then and adopted the tambourine, while retaining the same playing fields and rules inherited from the ball game. In the current state of research, the oldest known mention of the tambourine game appears in a document dated 1864, preserved in the Montpellier municipal archives, which attests to its practice in the cattle market square.