Here we feature a photograph of a painting entitled “The Shuttlecock”. This painting is more than two hundred years old, though no firm date is known, and it depicts the two main articles of equipment used in what was known as the game of Battledore and Shuttlecock which was of course, the forerunner of Badminton.
The painting was done by Jean Simeon Chardin who was born in Paris in 1699. He lived to a ripe old age, for those times, of 80, and so the picture's actual date must remain a little elastic, even if one can be certain that it dates from the reign of Louis XV. It can now be seen at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
The base of the shuttle looks almost modern, even if the seven feathers which it contains would seem to have been depicted with considerable artist's licence. They are of four different colours; three are white, two dark blue, one a light red and the seventh a yellowy brown.
They are not tied together with thread and must therefore have caused a considerable wobble in flight!
The racket does not seem very dissimilar to that used in those days for Tennis, or Real Tennis as that game is now more widely known. Whatever material, probably wood,of which the head of the racket is made, it appears to be tightly covered with leather of a reddish hue, and the throat,as well as the rather lengthy handle is further reinforced by white material which is probably alone responsible for the maintenance of the shape of the head.
One can count only seven main strings and perhaps a dozen cross strings in the racket, but it is interesting that the racket is indeed strung, very loosely though the artist may have depicted it and is not therefore a true battledore.
The unknown young lady must have had some difficulty in hitting the shuttlecock, at least underhanded with her voluminous skirt, not to mention the awkward handbag or key ring hanging from her playing arm. But, all this probably represents only the artist's imagination in an age when it was customary to paint young people holding what was then only a childish toy. In the same period we find many paintings of boys holding Cricket bats. However, the custom was fortunate in that we might not otherwise know so much about the weapons used in the games of the time.
-- IBF Handbook for 1971