Bowling Ball by Edward M. Fielding – prints available at:  https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/art/bowling

Quirky is how Rhode Island is often described.  The smallest state in the union but one with a lot of character.  Sort of like the sport of bowling.  Full of characters and quirky history and often the inspiration of the offbeat like the movies Kingpin and The Big Lebowski.

When the developers of the Hope Artiste Villiage, a converted mill turned into a complex of stores, restaurants and artist’s work/live studios, toured the Hope Webbing Company factory, they fell in love with the company’s duckpin bowling alley.

The bowling alley was build as a bid to the workers to try to stop them from unionizing.  It didn’t work but the bowling alley remained.  This is old time bowling with nothing automatic.  Human pinsetters were used then and now.

As the mill renovation continued, the bowling alley has been opened to the public as a bar and six lane duckpin alley and operations like it did in its nearly 100 year old history as Breaktime Bowl and Bar – https://breaktimebowlandbar.com

Upon restoration, the alley saw its first use in over 20 years. It now has the chance to continue providing activity for years to come! It is one of, if not the last, surviving industrial recreation duckpin bowling alleys in the United States.

Bowling is a sport or leisure activity in which a player rolls or throws a bowling ball towards a target. It is one of the major forms of throwing sports. In pin bowling variations, the target is usually to knock over pins at the end of a lane. When all the pins are knocked down on the first roll, this is a strike.  Duckpin or candlepin use smaller balls with no finger holes and the balls are all uniform in size and weight.  You get three rolls per turn and the pins are not cleared between rolls.

Originally duckpins were set by human pinsetters, known as pinboys. Automatic duckpin setters were developed in 1953 by a kooky inventor named Kenneth Sherman and named the Sherman duckpin setter (video of duckpin bowling and Sherman duckpin setter). Duckpins suffered a fatal blow when the Sherman company ceased operations in 1973. Brunswick Equipment offered to buy Sherman’s patent, which would have kept the machinery in production, but he said no – a stroke of stubbornness duckpin bowlers call “The Curse Of Ken Sherman.”