Tuesday 4 June 2019

Tucked away in a drawer for the better part of five decades, a family in Edinburgh has learned that their treasured heirloom conversation piece is one of the five legendary missing pieces from the Lewis Chessmen (previously), a medieval set from the twelfth century unearthed on the Isle of Lewis in northern Scotland in 1831. A shrewd antiques dealer got the artefact for a bargain of £5 and it has been appraised at over a million pounds—hopefully auctioned off to join its team mates.

Wednesday 17 April 2019

pawnographic

We regret having missed this scandalising graphic design choice from December of 2017 when the new season’s World Chess Championship logo had its debut, but it is still resonant since the world (on-line and off) is puerile as ever and wont and eager to prise a dirty joke or snicker out of any situation. The studio behind this pugilistic emblem as well as the client organisation that commissioned it called out as something obviously tantric responded in a healthy way, however, appreciating the furore and the focus it brought.
The world is lousy with bad design and there’s a lot of unintended suggestiveness—though of course sex sells, but overall attacking what’s bold or avant-garde makes design as whole boring and more conservative, brands and associations not wanting to risk what might be made the butt of ridicule. This obsession—which I am sure will go into overdrive with candidates developing their campaign imagery—seems to me like a surrogate for that persistent though mythical legend about subliminal advertising (by definition, if it is subliminal, it does not register) that had people trying to find (and in some cases swearing to it) nudes in ice cubes for the past six decades.  More to explore at the link up top.

Monday 5 November 2018

tafl top

Our gratitude to TYWKIWDBI for the introduction to the family of Nordic and Celtic strategy board games played out on a grid with asymmetrical armies with the player on the defensive clustered at the centre of the board—protecting a king or castle from capture.
Known as hnefatafl (fist-table—I guess for pounding the table and upsetting the pieces out of frustration over losing) or Viking chess, variants were played in the British Isles and Scandinavia for centuries—with the received rules written down by natural philosopher Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, but so rife with errors and mistranslations that the rules needed to be re-written and the original form of play was lost. Trying to reconstruct this ancient game, however, and watching it evolve has proven to be a fun and fertile activity. Learn more at the link up top.