Canada has recently added data back to 1861 in its Industrial Designs Database. This means that images of designs can be searched for by name of applicant or title. The latter enriches greatly the ability to search for Victoriana and the like.
You can also browse through the Canadian design classification. This gave me 733-21 as the class for hockey game boards. Asking for this class gave me 21 designs: I expected more.
The results give small images of the design, and you can click for more information. I am aware that American design patents have been scanned but such databases are unwieldy to use -- useful as it is, the Google database does not allow design patents only to be searched for.
The British equivalent are kept in the National Archives. They are very numerous and are kept in immense volumes, sometimes with samples of fabric and the like pinned to the page. Scanning it would be wonderful but also very difficult, and indexing data would be added to make it more than a browsing tool. There is a leaflet about their holdings.
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