Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Medieval Fair on Burg Clam

Some pictures from the medieval fair on Burg Clam from June 1st. It was a nice fair, beautiful setting and relaxed atmosphere.


A car-view of the castle



Absolute highlight of the fair was the Fangdorn-show, with an immensely moveable dragon (10m long, 3m tall), breathing smoke and fire (not as much fire as he'd have liked to, due to Austrian security regulations, but still quite impressive). The actors were incredibly funny. They were prevented from doing some of the special-effects, so they compensated a bit with hilarious side-comments. Spontaneity rocks.



Afterwards the kids could go and touch Fangdorn. You wouldn't believe how quickly a giant dragon can get drowned in kids.

***

Apparently our fast-paced society already began in the fifteenth century, when the chess rules were altered in order to allow for a quicker game.

Inspired by one of the craftsmen in Clam, I designed a Byzantine Chess:


The ornaments are based on clothes patterns from ancient Byzanthium, as is the clothing of the figure in the middle (symbolizing luck/destiny). The craftsman who was working on a Merels game board in Clam also told us that, in medieval art, women whose face was painted in two colours symbolized unstaete (falsehood or inconsistency), which I shamelessly took over for my design.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting chess-board!
Never thought about a circular one. How do you play chess on this? Are there the same figures as in traditional contemporary chess?

What about your self-made chess? Have you already started with the figures? Will it be like the sketch?

Greetinx, CwB

Manuela said...

The figures are pretty much the same, except that there are elephants instead of bishops (Läufer). Their movement is slightly different, because the rules are still the medieval ones.
You can find the details of the gameplay here: http://www.spielmeisterey.de/byzantinisches_schach.html

I haven't started with the game yet. But I will, soon, now that I got the tools for the woodworking from Dick GmbH ;)
Now I just need to find a nice piece of wood that can be carved easily. I'll do the figures last, because they are the greatest piece of work and I still need to design them. First, though, the chess board itself :)