Printing plate for the rules of the game Kletter-Äffchen

1 printing plate for letterpress printing (raised) with game instructions.

Founded in the small town of Fürth, Germany at the end of the 19th century by Jacob Wolf Spear, J. W. Spear & Sons quickly developed into a global player in the gaming industry. Based in Nuremberg and Enfield near London, the company published international game classics such as The Flying Hats and Scrabble. During the 115 years of the company's history, numerous games, designs, prototypes and documents were stored in the company archives. When toy giant Mattel bought up the company in the 1990s, Francis Spear, great-grandson of the company founder, was able to save the valuable archive. He invited scholars and enthusiasts to his private Spear's Games Archive to study the collection which documents four generations of his family history and game history alike. In 2017, he donated the complete collection to the Deutsches Spielearchiv (German Games Archive) in Nuremberg. More than 2,000 games and documents of this traditional company have now found their new and permanent home there.