GREETINGS, all you followers of the creative arts. For a special person, I will be featuring some wilder pieces to show that it can still be fun to produce art even when the coordination is going a bit and there is a tendency to drop the brush onto the work occasionally. No, you haven’t spoilt the piece! You have made a creative new mark. So … the painting of the day is Butterfly Dancer; and some butterflies are laminated, bent and attached to the background by the centre only, so that they stand up from the work. The background consists of lots of splatters and dropped brushes. The dancer’s costume is a glued-on scrap of rice paper.
Our story is a short article about the intriguing Isle of Lewis chess pieces, and the poem is the result of attempting to put a new slant on a hackneyed old noun.
Exquisite Chess Pieces
SOME OF THE WORLD’S most appealing and skilfully wrought chess pieces date back to the twelfth century
Discovered near Uig on the Scottish Isle of Lewis in 1831, they were carved, probably in Norway, from whale ivory and walrus tusks.. The pieces present some cunning caricatures of the roles represented in chess, and must have afforded both their artisans and their users a great deal of amusement. The long Nordic winters certainly provided plenty of time for working on the finer details.
The pieces were also used in the Viking game of tofl.
In all, 93 pieces have been found, from four different sets. Eighty-two are in the British Museum and eleven in the National Museum, Scotland.
Lovey Dovey
Except heavenly dove and stars above?
It makes me sigh, but I’ll give it a try …
Still couldn’t help giving his love a shove:
They were perched on the roof of a witches’ coven;
She fell down the chimney and into the oven.
The heavenly aroma of a lovey dovey stew.
~END~
