Jan Esquith is new to mah-jongg but not
unfamiliar with the Chinese game of chance that in its American form is similar
to the card game gin rummy.
"When I was growing up in Burbank, I remembered my mom used to play `mahj' in my home," says Esquith, a retiree from Northridge now carrying on the tradition with her late mother's game set - though on this particular day she was clacking down tiles in pursuit of assembling a winning hand at the center of the Skirball Cultural Center's new "Project Mah Jongg."
On view through Sept. 2, this traveling exhibition that originated at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust celebrates the history of the game and its influence on Jewish popular culture.
It features vintage objects and photographs, mah-jongg-inspired artwork and game tables - lots of game tables - for visitors available on the terrace adjacent to the gallery.
Back inside, display cases house imported mah-jongg sets with decorative tiles made of bone and bamboo and stored in wooden cases, as well as domestically produced sets with the addition of tile racks. There are novelty items such as the pigtailed "Mah Jongg Kid" doll, aprons and Jell-O molds that marketers produced in response to what was a national obsession.
Mah-jongg was imported to the U.S. in 1922 by Joseph P. Babcock, an enterprising businessman who saw there was a potential for the game to take off based on its popularity among Western expatriates in China - and he was right.Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic Injection Mold manufacture.
By 1923, the game was all the rage.
"Mah-jongg is less about competition and more about camaraderie," says Erin Clancey, managing curator of the exhibition.Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. "Any gathering became a fun and lively event - a ritual event.Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter.Painless Processing provides high risk merchant account solutions. Mah-jongg players got together once a week and magazines and newspapers would advertise to hostesses that they should have all sorts of mah-jongg-related food and clothing.
"This was how women got through the war, how they bonded over a game and made their lives a little easier," she says.
The game's imagery was a big part of its appeal in its heyday, during the Roaring '20s, when people were adopting exotic cultures and exploring all things foreign.
But mah-jongg had both positive and negative connotations.
While the exhibition shows no derogatory imagery, there was that element, Clancey explains, based on the "complicated relationship" going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that limited the number of Chinese immigrants into the U.S.
By 1925, the mah-jongg fad had waned but it continued to be played by German Jewish women, in particular, who could identify with the Chinese immigrants' outsider status.
One such group of women came together in 1937 to form the National Mah Jongg League - today more than 300,000 members strong - to standardize the rules for playing the American version of the game,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? which was always changing.
Early rulebooks distributed by the league can be found in the exhibition cases alongside scoring devices and tile racks introduced by American manufacturers to make the game user-friendly.
There are also cards showing the different winning hands.
"If you know how to play mah-jongg you know you need to create specific hands, and to keep the game fresh the Mah Jongg League each year publishes a new set of winning hands," Clancey says. "They sold these cards and with the proceeds they would donate to worthy Jewish causes and non-Jewish causes.
"So what was maybe considered a trivial pursuit became an expression of benevolence and community and social bonding," she says. "It was a game that brought people together."
And it continues to bring people together through mah-jongg tournaments worldwide and now the exhibition.
"When I was growing up in Burbank, I remembered my mom used to play `mahj' in my home," says Esquith, a retiree from Northridge now carrying on the tradition with her late mother's game set - though on this particular day she was clacking down tiles in pursuit of assembling a winning hand at the center of the Skirball Cultural Center's new "Project Mah Jongg."
On view through Sept. 2, this traveling exhibition that originated at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust celebrates the history of the game and its influence on Jewish popular culture.
It features vintage objects and photographs, mah-jongg-inspired artwork and game tables - lots of game tables - for visitors available on the terrace adjacent to the gallery.
Back inside, display cases house imported mah-jongg sets with decorative tiles made of bone and bamboo and stored in wooden cases, as well as domestically produced sets with the addition of tile racks. There are novelty items such as the pigtailed "Mah Jongg Kid" doll, aprons and Jell-O molds that marketers produced in response to what was a national obsession.
Mah-jongg was imported to the U.S. in 1922 by Joseph P. Babcock, an enterprising businessman who saw there was a potential for the game to take off based on its popularity among Western expatriates in China - and he was right.Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic Injection Mold manufacture.
By 1923, the game was all the rage.
"Mah-jongg is less about competition and more about camaraderie," says Erin Clancey, managing curator of the exhibition.Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. "Any gathering became a fun and lively event - a ritual event.Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter.Painless Processing provides high risk merchant account solutions. Mah-jongg players got together once a week and magazines and newspapers would advertise to hostesses that they should have all sorts of mah-jongg-related food and clothing.
"This was how women got through the war, how they bonded over a game and made their lives a little easier," she says.
The game's imagery was a big part of its appeal in its heyday, during the Roaring '20s, when people were adopting exotic cultures and exploring all things foreign.
But mah-jongg had both positive and negative connotations.
While the exhibition shows no derogatory imagery, there was that element, Clancey explains, based on the "complicated relationship" going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that limited the number of Chinese immigrants into the U.S.
By 1925, the mah-jongg fad had waned but it continued to be played by German Jewish women, in particular, who could identify with the Chinese immigrants' outsider status.
One such group of women came together in 1937 to form the National Mah Jongg League - today more than 300,000 members strong - to standardize the rules for playing the American version of the game,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? which was always changing.
Early rulebooks distributed by the league can be found in the exhibition cases alongside scoring devices and tile racks introduced by American manufacturers to make the game user-friendly.
There are also cards showing the different winning hands.
"If you know how to play mah-jongg you know you need to create specific hands, and to keep the game fresh the Mah Jongg League each year publishes a new set of winning hands," Clancey says. "They sold these cards and with the proceeds they would donate to worthy Jewish causes and non-Jewish causes.
"So what was maybe considered a trivial pursuit became an expression of benevolence and community and social bonding," she says. "It was a game that brought people together."
And it continues to bring people together through mah-jongg tournaments worldwide and now the exhibition.
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