When Warren Battle, co-owner of the art and antiques store Battle Brown in Hudson, New York, saw a polychromatic Parcheesi board for sale at last year’s Delaware Antiques Show, he stopped dead in his tracks. It wasn’t inexpensive, “but it was so beautiful,” he remembers. Hand-painted in vibrant colors, it was a humble yet proud piece made for quiet entertainment. It was a work of art in the way that so much folk Americana is: as a resonant testimonial to a moment, an individual, and a love of play. Battle had to have it...