Description

16^th Century Inlaid Game Board, Chess & Tabula (backgammon).  Walnut base, cedar frame, with maple and brass marquetry, and decorative inlay strips.   The board measures 16” by 16”.

History

 Both chess and tabula have been played in courts for hundreds of years.  The Lewis chess pieces found on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, have been dated between 1150 and 1200.  The Lewis chess pieces form the largest single surviving group of objects from the period that were made purely for recreational purposes.   Tabula counters have been found in graves in Continental Europe.  A Germanic burial dating from AD 300 found in the cemetery at Leuna, Saxony, contained a set of black and white counters and a double-sided wooden board. This was marked out for two games, tabula, a form of backgammon and latrunculi (soldiers) a game of matched forces.  A tabula board was recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose.  After being submerged for 437 years, only one piece of inlay was missing.  (Figure 1)

Materials and Construction

 Walnut, Cedar, Maple, Decorative inlay strips, Brass strips, and Glue

I decided to build an inlaid game board after seeing one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) (Figure 2).  This was the first time that I have ever tried to do inlay.  I started by picking the wood that I wanted to use.  All of the species I chose are either period woods or the American version of them.  I ended up using walnut as the base for the board after finding a beautiful piece of walnut.  I decided that I wanted the frame to contrast the board slightly and found a cedar board that seemed to work nicely (Figure 3).  I wanted a light colored inlay for the light squares and tabula points and chose a figured maple.  After acquiring the wood for the inlay, I decided that I wanted the center of the game board to be less ornate than the original in the MET.   

The pieces of walnut and cedar were taken to a woodshop and cut to their basic dimensions.  The walnut pieces are 8” x 16”, the cedar pieces are 8” and 16” lengths (Figure 4).  The inlay areas were carved out of the walnut by hand.  The "white" spaces on the chess board were 1¾" square.  The "white" points on the tabula side were 1” wide at the base and 4½” long (Figure 5).

Next, I hand cut the maple, brass strips, and decorative inlay strips to fit the carved spaces.  These were then glued into place.  I used a wood glue to adhere the inlay down.  In period, a glue made of bones and sinews cooked at least 12 hours was used. 

The game board frame was sanded with a finishing sander.  The entire inlay was hand sanded and then finished with a coat of Boiled linseed oil and waxed.  (Figures  6, 7, & 8)

Hand made game pieces in walnut and maple are in the planning stages. 

If I were to do this project again – and had the proper tools – I would make my own decorative inlay.  I also found that the walnut was easier to carve than the cedar.

In the end, my game board ended up more resembling the one from the Mary Rose than the one in the MET.  Nevertheless, the former is more fitting to my persona who, as a ship’s navigator, would not have been likely to own a board as fancy as the one displayed in the MET. 

Detail Images of the Board

Links and Bibliography

Bibliography

Gardiner, Julie with  AllenMicheal J., ed. , Before The Mast, Life and Death Aboard the Mary Rose, The Mary Rose Trust Ltd, Portsmouth, England, 2005

 Raymond, Pierre. Marquetry, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2002

J. Robinson, The Lewis Chessmen.  London, British Museum Press, 2004

N. Stratford, The Lewis Chessmen and the Enigma of the Hoard. London, The British Museum Press, 1997

J. Stevens, 'On the remains found in an Anglo-Saxon tumulus at Taplow, Buckinghamshire', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 40 (1884)

Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

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