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Game Boards, Burned
Pyrography is the art of decorating through the application of heat. In the twenty-first century, we tend to think of it as woodburning, but pyrography includes leather, cloth, and other materials. It is a period technique, but it is also one that's hard to track down. Pyrography as a common pictorial craft doesn't come into widespread use until the advent of the pokerwork kits in the Victorian era. Extensive decoration with heated metal requires a steady flow of hot iron, a difficult thing to obtain. However, evidence of heated metal burning decorations on to surfaces can be found on bookbindings, chests, musical instruments, and other such things in Western European culture. Non-European culture also has plenty of evidence for pyrography as a method of decoration, as well, evidenced in pre-Columbian art in South America, aboriginal art in Australia, and tribal art in Africa. While it is not a ubiquitous art form in European cultures before 1600, it did exist. So, too, did simple game boards. R. C. Bell cites quite a few of them in Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, including a double-sided game board described as from about 900 CE, "cut on one side for nine-men's-morris and on the other for a game which may have been hnefatafl." (page 94) He also describes a simple hnefatafl board from 400 CE or earlier. The York excavations also turned up a simple wooden game board, also probably for hnefatafl, as well as a nine man's morris board scratched into a coffin lid. Most of these simple boards are described as "cut" or "scratched" or "scored." For someone with zero wood carving skills, pyrography seems a perfect way to make some simple boards. The heated tool scores the board and leaves a darkened impression behind for play. All the following boards were made in conjunction with the individuals I work with in my modern job; we collected scrap wood, they sanded it down, I drew the game board patterns, some of the boards were burned on my own, some with their help, and they applied the varnish. All the boards are double-sided, containing a different game on each side, as the board cited in Bell.
References and Links Asplund, R. (SCA: RanthufR Asparlundr) Waxed Tablets. http://www.randyasplund.com/browse/scribepg/tablets.html Particularly notable for the description of a wooden wax tablet with an Imperial Roman seal burned into the wood. Bell, R. C. Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition. Dover:New York. 1979. Carlson, I. Marc. Period Leather Working Techniques. http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/leather/plwt.html. Mentions specific instances of pyrography on leather. Kingsbury, J. (SCA: Miriam bas Levi). Pyrography. In Tournaments Illuminated, Winter, 1998. SCA, Inc: Milipatas, CA. (wayback version) Knight, R. (SCA: Modar Neznanich) Medieval Games. http://www2.kumc.edu/itc/staff/rknight/Games.htm Princeton University. Hand Bookbindings: Blind Tooling. http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/hb/cases/blindtooling/index.html Schreffler, M. (SCA: Mot Cather) Pyrography: A Renaissance Art. http://www.geocities.com/mot@swbell.net/pyro.html Contains a number of references to period pyrography and further links. York Archeological Trust. http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/ See game boards specifically where linked in above article. Questions, comments, suggestions, thoughts? I welcome correspondence at merouda (at) hotmail (dot) com. Use your back button, or {Elyse Boucher} {Arts and Sciences Top} {A&S Heraldry} {Poopie the Pirate} {Help Support This Site} (old link bar, some still active): {Elise Boucher} {Sept Pendray} {Merouda Pendray}
This document created April 10, 2005 |
