Strung Battledores 1849 - Roots of Badminton

The game of battledore and shuttlecock was played with small racquets made from wooden frames that were either strung with natural gut, covered with vellum, or covered with leather. The head of these racquets was typically round or oval, the handle short. Strung battledores allowed for more precise and consistent play than solid or vellum-covered versions.

3 strung Battledores

By the sixteenth century, battledore and shuttlecock had become a familiar pastime in Europe, particularly in England and France. Early depictions from the Renaissance show both children and adults engaging in the game. It required neither a net nor court boundaries, and its objective was purely cooperative as players aimed to keep the shuttlecock in the air for as many consecutive strokes as possible. Records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries describe the game as part of domestic leisure culture, played indoors during winter and outdoors in gardens or courtyards in summer.

Close-up of trebling string pattern

The strung battledore racquet shown employed the trebling technique. Cross strings were wound fully around the main strings, forming a dense and durable mesh. This construction distributed impact evenly across the surface, extending the playable life of the strings. Further surviving nineteenth-century examples from England and France confirm that trebling was already a recognized stringing method long before the appearance of modern badminton equipment. The design reflects a clear understanding of material tension and elasticity, using twisted sheep gut that was dried and stretched for consistency.

Garden Tennis Event, 1887

During the nineteenth century, social clubs and private estates in Britain encouraged more formal lawn and garden games. The battledore, though simple in form, became a direct predecessor of both badminton and lawn tennis. The earliest organized “lawn” games used battledores and shuttlecocks before nets were standardized. By the 1870s, this recreational play evolved into codified racket sports. Historical accounts from 1873 in Gloucestershire link the introduction of a net and fixed scoring to the emergence of modern badminton rules.

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Andreas Fixemer

Berlin Tennis Gallery

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