Gaming Counter with the Arms of The Vintners' Company
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The Vintners’ Company owned this coat of arms. With its history steeped in the City of London wine trade, three tuns, or large barrels, which were used for transporting wine, are depicted on the shield[i]. The Vintners’ company was pivotal to the import, regulation, and sale of wine within England ever since its founding chapter in the fourteenth century. The Vintners’ company is still around today working within the wine trade in the same way they did when they ordered these counters[ii].
This fish counters were included in sets between about 1720 and 1740. This counter has a considerable amount of scales and therefore dates to the middle of the fish period or about 1730[iii]. No one knows for sure why the fish were created, but some speculate that it was due to linguistic miscommunication. In French, the word for counter is “fiche”, and a French trader may have ordered a set of “fishes” and received fishes instead[iv].
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