Bruges (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – VIVES University’s SpellenLab in Bruges now holds 26,000+ games after donations of 4,000 from Dutch collector Han Heidema and 500 from Belgian Marc Driesen, preserving rare historical titles.
As VRT News reported, the VIVES University of Applied Sciences in Bruges has expanded its SpellenLab with 2 major donations. One donation included 500 games, and the other came from the Dutch collector Han Heidema, adding 4,000 games. The lab now holds more than 26,000 unique titles.
Jef Suykerbuck, a member of the SpellenLab team, said the games show how culture and society influenced play over time. The collection provides students, researchers, and visitors with an opportunity to study the development of board games over centuries.
“Han was fascinated by train games,”
says Jef.
Last year, we even had visitors from the United States and Japan to study specific items from his collection.”
How has VIVES SpellenLab in Bruges expanded with 4,500 new games?
Jojanneke Heidema visited Bruges to deliver the final part of her late father Han Heidema’s board game collection to the SpellenLab at VIVES University of Applied Sciences. She said her father had wanted the games to be preserved in the lab after his death.
She mentioned that for many years, a large attic at their home was filled with his carefully collected games. Han Heidema searched online for authentic historic games and also enjoyed playing and buying new ones.
The second donation came from Marc Driesen of Heverlee, who gave around 500 games from Belgium, France, and England. The SpellenLab called these games a “wonderful addition” to its heritage collection. Volunteers from VIVES and Erfgoedcel Brugge are now cataloging and integrating both donations into the lab’s database.
When the process is completed, the whole collection of SpellenLab will be available digitally. Students, researchers and the public will then be able to navigate the entire collection online.
“After six years of intensive work, the entire heritage collection is now fully digitally accessible,”
Suykerbuck added.
“Thanks to this digital inventory, we now know exactly what we have. This also allows us to share the collection with a wide audience.”
The SpellenLab at VIVES University of Applied Sciences in Bruges preserves and studies board and parlour games from different periods. The collection now has over 26,000 unique games, including rare items from 1738–1740, such as a version of Snakes and Ladders made for Dutch nobility. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the lab added early editions of classic games and historic prints from Belgium, France, and England.
In Belgium, similar projects preserved board games for research and education. The Brussels Game Library started in the early 2000s to collect and loan games for schools and social programs. The Museum of Games in Antwerp also gathered historic games from the 18th and 19th centuries for public display.
