1915.50.100.17

Collection type

Object

Description

Gaming pieces carved in mammoth ivory. The piece is carved with a square base with carved design. [FB 25/07/2014]

Long description

Gaming pieces carved in mammoth ivory. The piece is carved with a square base with carved design. The design consists of six stacked squares, resembling a tree, with a diamond shaped pattern in the middle. [FB 25/07/2014]

Geographical reference

Russia

Europe > Eastern Europe > Russia

Siberia

Cultural groups

IAkut

Person

Field collector Maria Antonina Czaplicka

PRM source Maria Antonina Czaplicka

PRM source Committee for Anthropology, University of Oxford

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1914

Date collected

1914

Acquisition information

Donated: 1915

Materials and processes

Material Mammoth Ivory Tooth Animal, Process Carved

Dimensions

Height: max 38 mm, Width: max 12 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1915.50.100.17

Research and responses

In the caption to Plate 47 in Chessmen for Collectors, by Victor Keats (London: B. T. Batsford, 1985) there is what appears to be a reference to this set and thus the implication that at least some of the pieces featured in Plate 47 are in the Pitt Rivers Museum: '47... Russian Kholomogory carved walrus ivory chessmen on the theme of Russians in Roman uniform versus Turks (or Persians), seventeenth/eighteenth century (State Historical Museum of Moscow, MMNY, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Moscow State Museum, Leningrad Museum, Pitt-Rivers and Melsen Collections)....' However, none of the pieces illustrated resembles any of the pieces in the PRM collections. I assume, therefore, that the author merely meant to imply that there are examples of Russian chessmen in the Pitt Rivers Museum. (Photocopy of relevant page in RDF.) [JC 21 10 2010, 6 1 2011]

Search terms: Toy and Game, Gaming Piece