1-629-394 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Lewis Chessmen, (Norwegian?), c1150-c1200, (c1920). Nine ivory chess pieces from a collection of ninety-three found at Uig on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. The pieces consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisks. A board large enough to hold all the pieces would have measured 82 centimetres across. When found, some of the Lewis chessmen were stained red. Consequently the original chessboard may have been red and white, as opposed to the modern convention of black and white. By the end of the eleventh century, chess was a very popular game among the aristocracy throughout Europe. The Lewis chess pieces form the largest single surviving group of objects from the period that were made purely for recreational purposes. Illustration from Story of the British Nation, Volume I, Walter Hutchinson, (London, c1920s).