Category: Visual/Glasswork
Item: 11th Century Viking Flamework (Lampwork) Glass Chess Set
The chess set was inspired by a little glass game piece excavated in Birka, one of the Viking commercial centers of the Middle Age Scandanavian countries. This game piece and the Isle of Lewis Chess Set were the inspirations for my entry. A Viking flameworker made this little character in Birka so I put myself in their place. I have always wanted to make a chess set and decided to create a whole chess set out of glass. As a flameworker I considered it a challenge and a joy to create this chess set using all the same techniques and similar materials the common Viking flameworker would have used.
Chess has come down through the ages from what is believed to be the oldest know form called Chaturanga. It originated in India in or before the 7th Century. The documentation is in Sanskrit and “the word ‘chaturanga’ means ‘quadripartite’( divided into four parts); one elephant, one chariot, three soldiers on horseback and five foot soldiers” (www.chessvariants.com). Many variations came about from this original version and each piece was adapted to local customs as it evolved. The variation familiar to Europeans came through Persia (Iran) then Italy and Spain. Around 1000 A.D., the Vikings were known to take it up through the Scandinavian countries all the way to Iceland and Greenland (math.uww.edu). The Isle of Lewis Chess set was created from this acquisition of the knowledge of the game. Pictures of the actual pieces of the Isle of Lewis chess set I took in the British Museum in 1992 are displayed. Ever since I saw these in the museum I have wanted to create a set for myself. Now, 12 years later I am finally going to accomplish this by a means that is near and dear to my heart, flamework/lampwork. It is also a craft that the Vikings practiced and goes with my Viking persona. Since the looks of many of the pieces were still in the process of being adapted to local customs, I have taken the liberty of doing some adaptations myself. Below I describe my thought process for the creation of each piece.
Pawn – I wanted it simple but creative. I borrowed a look from the warder (rook) of the Isle of Lewis Chess set. I created it to look similar to the head only added a nasal helm look and made it just the head. When creating one of these pieces I ran out of fire and couldn’t complete it. Instead of wasting the glass, I decided that one of the pawns ran off to battle and forgot to put his helmet on. Call him a berserker if you wish. See if you can find him.
Warder/Rook –Though this piece is depicted as a fighter with shield in the Isle of Lewis chess set I chose to make it look like the chimney of a long house but it always looks like a tower, the more traditional look for that chess piece.
Knight – I designed the Knight to look like a horse head from the same time period. I was going to make this a dragon’s head after the surviving samples of the bows of their famous ships, but since horses were also depicted especially, in the Isle of Lewis chess set, I kept to the horse theme. Notice the flowing manes.
Bishop – Since the 11th Century was a time of conversion from pagan to Christianity I created this piece to look like an upright Thor’s Hammer (pagan symbol) for the dark side and the cross (Christian symbol) for the white side. Both these symbols of religion can be found on surviving artifacts from this time period, I made an artists decision to use them both in this set, one for each sides.
King – Each King has his own individual look based upon hand carved representations of the Isle of Lewis chess set. One has a curly beard the other a straight. I was influenced by the style of head beads once popular throughout the middle east. The technique for creation of this look would have been known by the Viking flameworker. One King has the eye protection helm for his crown as a great chieftan would have worn, the other just wears a crown.
Queen – This design was based upon influence taken from 6th century women figurines and the Isle of Lewis Chess set. I decided I wanted their hair to depict braids which is the way women often wore their hair. They both have long hair.
Chess Board – I decided a piece of leather with dye stained squares makes a great board because it can be folded up and put in a little chest with the game pieces. This makes it portable and something Vikings would have appreciated. Leather was a commonly used material and dyes were also readily available in each city.
The size of my chess pieces is comparable to metal and wooden figurines found during this time period. Keeping it small also allows portability. The Isle of Lewis chess set is a bit larger, but these pieces are carved from Walrus ivory, believed to be brought back from Iceland or Greenland. To hand carve an item you would need it to be bigger and therefore, easier to handle. Manipulation of the glass is easier in a small item and facilitates the annealing process. The annealing process allows the outside of the glass piece to cool down at the same rate as the inside. What this means is slowing the atoms down at the same time so the inside atoms and the outside atoms don’t collide which would cause the glass to break. With larger glass items this is always a possibility since they didn’t have fancy ovens as we do today to anneal. I kept my annealing as close to the way the Vikings would have accomplished this as I could using a crock pot and vermiculite. I talk more about this later in this article.
Head beads have been around since Egyptian times. The head beads in the picture are an example of old and new. The techniques used to create these head beads were also used by Viking flameworkers as mentioned earlier. I used the same technique to create my glass heads. The large head bead was made approximately 2 B.C. The small was made more recently.
Each of my chess pieces were created at the tip of a steel mandrel which acted as a punty. The mandrel was coated with a clay material so the molten glass could be applied. The clay material allowed the finished glass piece to be removed from the mandrel after the annealing process. This is the same technique the Viking Flameworker used (www.vikinganswerlady.com).
The Vikings performed the technique by heating a glass rod and the iron mandrel in an open flame. Once the glass was soft enough to manipulate it was applied to the mandrel by spinning the mandrel allowing the molten glass to wind onto the mandrel (the Vikings worked with glass rods purchased from glass makers. They would also scavenge pieces of broken glass and re-cycle it). This process is a very time consuming process. To emulate the Viking method I lowered the intensity my flame. I melted my glass rods in a fire created by a Mapp gas canister, then I manipulated the glass on the end of a metal rod to shape it into the chess pieces. I used metal and carbon objects to flatten and shape the molten glass. The eyes of each piece were made with a ‘stringer. The mane on the Knights was also applied with a stringer. Each piece took up to 30 to 45 minutes in the fire to create depending on how detailed the piece was. (See attached pictures of me making one of the Bishops) I used glass rods I purchased. My open fire was created with a Hot Head torch vs. a furnace created flame that the Vikings used. The Hot Head is specifically designed so it can be attached to a Mapp gas canister. Mapp gas is a brazing gas and was used to create my fire that I used to melt my glass. The techniques I used are the same that the Vikings used. The techniques haven’t changed throughout the centuries. The tools are a little different but give the same results. I wore eye protection to protect my eyes from the yellow part of the flame. There is no evidence that the Vikings had any form of eye protection and probably went blind as they got older. The Vikings used an earthen furnace that housed a fire in the lower part (www.Viking Answer Lady.com) and the upper part had holes in the side and front so the Viking flameworker could put the mandrel and glass rod in to perform the same melting and winding technique on the mandrel. They worked above the flame. Since I do not have the facilities to build an earthen furnace, I used the Mapp gas because it’s easy to set up in my apartment. I did use a low heat which meant I had to work longer, but it emulated exactly what it would have been like to work in the furnace. The glass I use is the ‘softest’ we can acquire in this modern age without making it ourselves. The glass during the 11th century was ‘softer’ due to the more elementary silica/lime mixtures, and would have been comparable to my soft glass over a Mapp gas flame. Surviving samples of glass have been examined for the COE and it was found to be 115 to 120. That is why they were able to melt it over a furnace flame which is a little cooler than the flame I used. The glass used to create these pieces is a ‘soft’ glass known modernly as Effetere/Moretti. This means the coefficient of expansion (COE) is 104. What that means is the atoms are not packed very tightly and when a low heat is applied, the glass will become soft/molten. It also simply means there is more silica (sand) than lime and potash. Since glass is considered a liquid, even when in a hard state, once heated it will become the consistency of a thick honey and is easily manipulated. The Vikings, although not aware of the atomic structure of glass, knew that when heated they could manipulate the glass and did so to create many glass beads and other small items. We are still finding glass artifacts in archaeological digs like at Ribe, Jutland and Kaupang, Sweden, where there were large glass craft centers.
To anneal their glass items, they had an annealing pan (see picture) or built an attached clay oven onto the earthen furnace that they placed the fresh made items in while it was hot. As the fire cooled, so did the glass item and due to the slow cool down, annealed the glass. I put my fresh made items in a heated crock pot filled with vermiculite (insulating agent of natural material) and when I am done making the glass pieces, I turn the crock pot off, which emulates the effect the Viking flameworker got during their annealing process. After cooling down, the flameworker would scrape out the dust, remains of the clay that allowed it to come loose from the mandrell, wipe it clean and you have a finished piece.
Many glass pieces and many more glass beads have been excavated in Viking graves (www.kaupang.uio.no). The Viking craftsman had the potential to make this same chess set.
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