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Founded in the 19th century, the British company Jefferies & Co. was a pioneer in racquet manufacturing, trusted by Walter Clopton Wingfield, the founder of lawn tennis. Wingfield himself chose Jefferies to produce the first racquets for his groundbreaking game, Sphairistikè. A milestone in the sport's history. Jefferies & Co, 1884 Over the decades, Jefferies & Co became synonymous with craftsmanship and quality. Later known as Jeffries & Malings of Woolwich, the company merg

The ancient game of Rackets originated in late eighteenth-century London as a game played in debtor prisons such as the Kidderminster Prison and the Fleet Prison. Prisoners used a hard ball struck against brick or stone walls and improvised wooden bats. The environment required elongated strokes and rapid reactions in confined spaces. Racquet from the game of Rackets, 1803 As the sport gained popularity beyond prisons, taverns, schools and clubs constructed purpose-built cour

The antique real tennis racquet from the end of the eighteenth century features the classic lopsided head with a pronounced downward angle. The frame is made of solid hardwood, a material commonly used for racquet production throughout the eighteenth century. The stringing follows the trebling technique, where each cross string is looped completely around the main string. This method produced alternating surfaces on the string bed, one smoother and one rougher, which allowed

Demi-Paume racquets feature a distinct lopsided head with a pronounced downward angle. The stringing follows the trebling technique, where the cross strings are looped 360 degrees around the main strings. The handle is wrapped with leather, and the solid wooden frame reflects the craftsmanship of eighteenth-century makers. Garsault’s Demi-Paume, 1767 The racquet follows the design described by François-Alexandre-Pierre de Garsault  in 1767 . In his treatise Art du paumier-raq

Antonio Scaino, an Italian priest and theologian from Salò, completed Trattato del giuoco della palla  in 1555. The work was printed in Venice by Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari and his brothers, one of the leading publishing houses of the Renaissance. It is recognized as the earliest known treatise devoted entirely to the study of ball games in Europe. Scaino described the social context of play at the courts of Ferrara and Mantua and divided existing games into three main types

The game we now know as tennis took nearly a thousand years to evolve into its modern form. While some evidence suggests that early forms of ball games were played in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, most historians trace its direct origins to French monasteries around the year 1000 AD. Here, monks played jeu de paume, the “game of the palm,” striking a wooden ball with the bare hand or with a simple leather glove across a rope stretched through the cloister courtyard. The ga