"Isle of Lewis chess pieces as scenery pieces" Topic

Two plaster pieces I bought off ebay arrived today – they look the right size as grand statues for 25/28mm.

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I hope to get them painted soon.

I am rather fond of those myself. I am sure they will be neat…especially if you weather them and flock on a bit of moss, etc.

What are those? They look great.

Copies of C 12th chess pieces
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Awesome! I love the Isle of Lewis chessmen, I have a reproduction set although I've not played chess in donkeys' years.

@Pedrobear, who makes that Dwarf fig?

Wow! That looks great!

I bought a set of latex molds for these back in the early 80s. I don't recall who the manufacturer was but the company was from the UK. I still have some of the pieces but the molds have long since deteriorated. Oh, and I never did complete and entire chess set; the molds were a pain in the butt to use!

They would make a great field of battle with the statues strew about with the forest claiming them in some fashion.

Curious thing about the original set, there were 78 pieces found in Scotland…what sort of chess were they playing?

32 is a standard set, with 16 per side…even if the Lewis set were two sets that is still only 64…makes one wonder what sort of game they were playing.

Maybe there were several sets and these survived in portion, that would make sense.

Good stuff…I have been looking at getting a set since they were used on Harry Potter, the kids thought it would be fun to play wizard's chess.

@Matakishi…ridiculously good as usual, wish I was within gaming distance to you so I could see all your pretty little toys all at once :)

Curious thing about the original set, there were 78 pieces found in Scotland…what sort of chess were they playing?

There are bits of at least four sets among the pieces IIRC. More recent research has also suggested that the pieces could have been used for both tafl and chess, hence the peculiar number of pieces. Most academics refer to them as gaming pieces rather than chess pieces because of this.

I had considered that they may be board markers, for war strategy or planning?

Good stuff either way, thanks for the follow up wukong :)

I own a bunch of molding kits from the old Supercast company I bought in Hamley's many years ago. There are two different "Lewis" sets. and I have two other medieval and a Chinese set, as well. I have enjoyed casting them up and painting sets for many years. I have tried to sell unpainted cast sets at games cons, but no one wanted them. :(
I didn't think about selling them as terrain pieces, although I have used badly cast parts for that. These two pictured above would have been in the "reject" pile as not good enough.

BTW, it is quite a job seeing all the Lewis pieces recovered. There are many on display at the Scottish National museum, more at the Victoria and Albert (although I am not sure where in the new remodeling) and a few at the British Museum.

It is supposed that they are from several different sets, not a single set, hence the large number of pieces. Might have been stashed there by a merchant who dealt on chess sets, for example.

"@Pedrobear, who makes that Dwarf fig?"

That's a LOTR plastic dwarf warrior.

"Might have been stashed there by a merchant who dealt on chess sets, for example."

Nah, the owner was a wargamer… That's the equivalent of the "lead mountian" in those days.

And unpainted I see…typical..

:)

Here they are painted:

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As with most examples of terrain/miniatures, they look so much better with some paint on them!

:)