Hello my name is Irving Finkel.
I work in the British Museum.
I'm a curator
and welcome to my corner.
So today we're going to talk about the Lewis Chessmen.
The Lewis Chessmen are not in my department which is called the Middle East
they're in a totally different department which I don't approve of
but I can't do anything about it.
They've been carved in the middle of the 12th century out of walrus tusks
by craftsmen who were really geniuses
but they imparted to those chess pieces a huge dollop of humanity
and rather a lot of humour.
So these chessmen probably were carved north of England
in Norway, Scandinavia - we don't know where
there are different theories about it.
Some group of them was buried on the shore of Lewis for reasons we don't really know
and lay there from the middle of the 12th century till about 1830.
So those chess pieces are quite extraordinary
they were found somewhere on the Isle of Lewis on a white silvery beach on the northern shore
sometime in 1830 nobody - quite knows what really happened
there's a story about a nunnery
there's a story about a murder
there's all the usual stories
but the most reasonable one is that a cow was munching grass
which was growing on the edge of the beach
and somehow with its foot or its nose dislodged something which slid apart
and there revealed and some kind of case
where all these small ivory chess pieces
who must have terrified the life out of the first person who saw them
because they probably thought they were devils
but wisdom prevailed and somebody local scooped them up
or most of them...
and they were taken to the mainland on the quiet
and they were sold to a collector here and a collector there
and the bulk of them ended up in the British Museum
and the rest in the museum in Edinburgh.
When you see them for the first time something magical happens
and they bewitch you
and of course that's what happened to me
that's what happens to all curators in this Museum
they come here as children, they fall in love with certain things
and for me it was in the first place the Lewis chess pieces
I never managed to get them out of my system
I've always, always been crazy about them.
So in the old days when I was a young person
you could buy replicas of these chess pieces in the shop.
It was an innovation
they were about one pound twelve shillings and sixpence
and they were made by craftsmen who did their utmost
to reproduce the look of ancient ivory
so they were very impressive.
We were not a particularly affluent family and we were brought up in such a way
that we only had treats on a small number of occasions
like birthdays and things of this kind
so I acquired my set of replicas of the Lewis chess pieces
32 pieces
on Christmas and birthdays over many, many years of work.
In fact, when I got my PhD I still was short seven pawns
and my dad decided he would buy those as a small gesture.
So I finally had a whole set to play with.
When you have that chess set in front of you
you feel like a general with an army at your disposal
fighting to the death
but also tinged with a big dollop of humanity as I said.
So it's a marvellous matter that they've come to light because
thousands and thousands and thousands of people have seen these chess pieces.
In fact they're in the back of people's mind
and sometimes you see them on biscuit tins
sometimes you see them on calendars
and of course you will have seen them in that cursed horrible film!
Whose name I forget about some kid with glasses
who had nothing better to do one afternoon than to play a game of chess
and they used the replicas of the Lewis chess pieces
which belong to me.
Thing was the movie wasn't very interesting
but the chess piece part was very interesting indeed
because if you ever saw it you will have seen how wicked this queen could be
and how vulnerable this poor military knight could be
in the face of her fury.
So these are the actual ones
and I would quite like to be able to bring this alive for you
by showing you that film if I can remember what it was called
but as I can't what we're going to do now is a kind of reenactment of it in the British Museum
so that it brings it back into your memory in case you've forgotten too.
**The kind of music you might hear at a magic school plays**
Knight to E5.
Queen to E5.
That's totally barbaric!
That's wizard's chess.
See you've packed.
I see you haven't.
Change a plan
my parents decided to go to Romania to visit my brother Charlie.
He's studying dragons there.
Now this is an interesting matter, I tell you for why
because in that film which will become nameless in this speech
it was necessary to have a chess set where children in the school could play a game
and the wardrobe mistress was sent to the British Museum
to get a set of Lewis chess piece replicas
because she was a British Museum girl
because her father and her grandfather had been keepers in this Museum
back in time a long way.
So she knew all about the Lewis chess pieces.
Like me, she's grown up admiring them.
So she came here to buy a set of replicas
and lo and behold there were none available in the shop even for ready money.
So she rang me up knowing I had these replicas
and to cut a long story short they borrowed my replicas for use in the film.
Now this isn't just a small matter
it's a matter of extremely significant archaeology
because when the chess pieces were first discovered some of them were red.
Most of them were white but some were red
they'd been stained artificially in the workshop to distinguish the two sides on the chessboard
because as we have black and white pieces
so originally they were white and red.
Well it turns out nowadays that you cannot
for love nor money
tell which of those pieces was originally red
because all the colour has vanished
even on the inside of the pieces where you have the kind of net of structure
which formed the marrow of the tusk so to speak
even in the interstices inside the core of the piece
there is no trace of red.
So I'd asked the man who makes these marvellous replicas
to make a replica set in red so we can see what they would really look like.
So what actually happened was that all the children in the world saw the replicas of the Lewis chess pieces
as they were originally red and white and if they watched attentively
which I hope they did
they will have seen how unpleasant and vicious in nature the red queen
could be when provoked.
They are amazing things
and I think they really need to be appreciated for lots of reasons.
Somehow or other they captivate the passerby.
It is true in museums that when people have been there a while
their legs get weary and they're actually thinking
longing for open the fields and yoghurt.
But sometimes things arrest their attention
and I have been many times hanging around by the case where the chess piece are
I'm often hanging around there
because I've always expected one of these days they will have a conversation
that I can overhear
but leaving that aside
it is always a heartwarming thing to see jaded people
who rather wish they were no longer in the British Museum at all
seeing these chess pieces and being electrified by them
and stooping down and saying:
'look at that, and look at that and isn't that marvellous'
and that is what they are they are marvellous.