Game Piece Prototypes

We have designed several game pieces which end up falling into two categories: those which come in pairs, like the bottle and lamp or the papyrus blossum and papyrus tamper, or those which are single geometrics, which will rely on casting colors to denote sides. These are still prototypes, from which we will cast molds this week, then cast multi-piece molds (if we still like them) for final production.

Carving Details

Some more close ups of some of our carving efforts: crocodile throwing sticks for senet and the game hnefetafl game pieces.

Hnefetafl--branching out a bit

For the last several months Senet and Tjau have been our focus (or obsession, whatever).  While we'll continue to produce works inspired by these games, we've started to look at other cultures and other ancient games as well.  Ancient Indian and Germanic games have been on our list of games to pursue for quite a while.  This picture shows the two main game pieces we'll probably use for the germanic Hnefetafl strategy game.  The pieces were hand carved out of wood, and we'll use them to produce molds the same way we did for the Senet game pieces.

Senet Board with Geometric banding

The edging of this ebony-stained Senet box is inspired directly from a geometric pattern that was repeated often at least in 14th Century BC Egypt.  You see it on the neck piece of the bust of Nefertiti from El Amarna (circa 1340 B.C.), the feather decorations on King Tut's gold coffin and his duck head chair (both circa 1327 B.C.).

If you look at the top edge of the neck piece the bust of Nefertiti you'll see the pattern we used here.  The image was taken from the Wiki entry on Nefertiti, taken by Phillip Pikart, and is published here under the GNU Free Documentation License.

New Senet Board

This senet board has the same glossy black box and gold leaf edging as one of our earlier boxes, but the game board itself is completely hand-carved and stained with walnut Danish oil. We really like the way the Danish oil brings out the carved squares and the natural grain of the pine board.