Origins of the game
Pucket is our own version of a traditional French game, known as Table à l'élastique or Passe Trappe. French artisans would make the game from wood and use cat gut for the elastic, which had to be kept moist during gameplay to stop it turning limp. The game is still played in France by traditional games enthusiasts.
After seeing two jolly old men playing Pucket on the street in a southern French town, we went straight to the DIY shop for materials to build one. A couple of years later, having refined the game and our technique, we felt it was too much fun to be kept to ourselves, and no one in Britain seemed to have heard of it.
The final inspiration was reading Jeremy Piercy's book Coffins, Cats, and Fair Trade...Toys, which describes the glut of skilled woodworking craftsmen and women in north India, now that the household goods that they used to craft are often imported and made from plastic. Thanks to an organisation called Aspiration International, we were able to get our Pucket games made by some of these artisans, with the assurance that they are receiving a fair wage for their work. During a trip to India in February 2010 we were able to meet with Aspiration International and visit the craftsmen to see them at work -have a look on our Ethical Sourcing page for some of the photos from our trip.
