The Game of Graces was a popular leisure activity

Leisure

Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....

 for young girls during the early 1800s. The game was invented in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 during the first quarter of the 19th century and called there le jeu des Graces. The Game of Graces was considered a proper game benefiting young ladies and, supposedly, tailored to make them more graceful. Graces was hardly ever played by boys, and never played by two boys at the same time, either two girls, or a boy and a girl.

How to play

Graces is played with two people. Each person gets two dowel rods

Dowel

A dowel is a solid cylindrical rod, usually made of wood, plastic or metal. In its original manufactured form, dowel is called dowel rod.Dowel rod is employed in numerous, diverse applications. It is used to form axles in toys, as detents on gymnastics grips, as knitting needles, as structural...

, four in total. Then, one of the players takes a wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

en hoop

Hoop

Hoop may refer to:*Hoop is one apparatus in Rhythmic Gymnastics*Hoop , an American basketball magazine*"Hoops" , a song by Ruby*Hoops , a basketball video game...

 and, pushing apart the two rods, makes the hoop fly in the air for the other player to try and catch it. The winner is the player who catches the hoop ten times first.

Mastering aiming and catching can be very time consuming. To throw the hoop, one takes the hoop and, with one rod in each hand, places the hoop over both of the rods so as they are inside of the hoop. The player would then let the hoop slide slightly down the rod and cross the rods in an X shape. Ideally, the hoop should be on the lower triangle of the X shape. Then, pulling the rods apart, the hoop will quickly slide up and shoot away from the player, towards the direction aimed for.

The hoop is generally 9 inches (23 cm) in diameter

Diameter

In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints are on the circle. The diameters are the longest chords of the circle...

 and decorated with different colored ribbons. The ribbon, used to make the hoop softer to catch, is wrapped all around the hoop in alteration with the ends left hanging off so that they will slow the hoop down in the air. The dowel

Dowel

A dowel is a solid cylindrical rod, usually made of wood, plastic or metal. In its original manufactured form, dowel is called dowel rod.Dowel rod is employed in numerous, diverse applications. It is used to form axles in toys, as detents on gymnastics grips, as knitting needles, as structural...

rods are 15 inches (38 cm) to 2 feet (61 cm) long. Some rods come to a point.

Other uses

Game of Graces is also a London based womenswear brand specialising in quirky retro inspired clothing. The brand name was derived from the traditional game.