Woodworking tools in the Libro de los Juegos

The book of games or Libro de los Juegos is a fascinating medieval manuscript. It was commisioned by the king of Castille, Alphonso X "the wise". The book was completed in 1283, the year before Alfonso’s death. The manuscript consists of 98 leaves, with 150 beautifully coloured drawings, ten of them occupying whole pages. Among the games described in the manuscript are chess (games of the brain), dice (games of luck), backgammon and variants (games of both luck and brains), nine-men-morris, and some others.

Like many others, we wanted to recreate some of these medieval games with their boards. Interestingly, three illuminations in the manuscript actually show how the games are made, together with their (woodworking) tools:

Folio 3 shows the creation of the chessboard (left) and its pieces (right). The man making the board is sitting next to a workbench. The tools on the bench are not very clear, but these could be carving knives or chisels used to create the intarsia for the black playing fields. The man on the right is making chess pieces using a bow lathe. He is using his feet to position the chisel, and his left hand to steady it. His right hand uses the bow to turn the lathe. This way of turning chess pieces is done exactly the same way today, more than 700 years later, in Morocco, as the (probably well known) YouTube video below shows.

 

The woodturner Mostopher Dnouch plying his trade in the medina of old Marrakech, Morroco. 

Video by Stuart King - A history of turning.

Folio 65v shows the making of dice from bone shards. The tools used to make the dice are also used in woodworking. The two men on the left are holding files, the third man from the left is holding a hacksaw, while the man with the red hat is using a pump drill. This is an ingenious instrument, used for many trades: to bore holes in stone or even precious stones, in surgery for trepanning, and of course in woodwork. I have once tried to make and use a pump drill, but was unable to keep the pump long enough in action for the drilling motion. Below are some reconstructed pump drills form Foteviken Historic Viking Village, Sweden, and from the Mittelaltercentret, Nykobing, Denmark.

Folio 73 shows the making of a (backgammon) table and its pieces, and is the last folio with woodworking tools in the manuscript. The man on the left is using a bow lathe in a similar way as the man making the chess pieces. This time we see the man on his other side, so we have a better view of the handling of the bow. The man on the right is using a (block) plane. Though the plane itself is not very clear, the manner in which he holds the tool, makes it clear that it must be a plane. The plane does not seem to have a handle in the Italian style, nor a toat in the German style.

We will show our boards for 'nine-men-morris' and 'the world' in another post.