Info on the Charlemagne set
by Rev. Craig Cowing

I made the pieces out of original Sculpey, a polymer clay which comes in white and red. I used white for both. It is rather soft once it is kneaded, so I had to use fine wire to hold some of the pieces together before they were baked in the oven. For the kings and queens I had to make and bake the parts of the pavilions separately and assemble them using Sculpey's special bakeable glue to put it together, otherwise parts would have sagged badly before baking.

After baking, I used water based stain on the pieces--just a quick application and wipe off for the white, and a couple of coats for the black/dark set. I then used a water-based satin polyurethane acrylic for a coating. The satin finish gave the pieces a really nice ivory look.

I debated for awhile about color. There seems to be some evidence that white and red were common colors for chess pieces at this time, but I am not aware of any residues of color on the so-called Charlemagne set. I am thinking that both sides may have been plain ivory color and each player would have told his or her pieces apart by the direction they were facing, a very easy thing to do with all the pieces being figural and facing in one direction. For modern players, though, that would have been too confusing, so I opted for a brown for the black side and ivory color for the white. It is possible that the pieces could have been stained with an organic compound that faded with time, so that didn't seem to be too much of a stretch.

The detail isn't exact for the larger pieces, but it's in the general ballpark.

As for the chessboard, there are no extant chessboards from this time period (late 11th/early 12th century) so I opted for red and white squares, thought to be fairly common for that time. The border is inspired by a border from an illumination in the Paris Psalter (10th century). It measures 40" square, with 4 1/2" squares, needed to accommodate the large pieces. The kings are a little over 5" high, the queens just under 5" high, the chariots and knights about 5" high, the elephants about 4" high, and the pawns about 2" high. The pieces are approximately the same size as the originals.

In playing a game with this set I get a feeling of expansiveness, with the figures sitting in position on the board. I can imagine a couple of nobles settling down for a long evening of chess with several goblets of wine, imagining the chess board to be a real battlefield. I get a feeling of a contest, however, rather than a battle as such, with the king and queen each in their pavilion as though they were presiding over a jousting match or something of that sort. Regardless, interacting with this set is almost eerie in the way it sends me back to the past. This was my motivation for making these sets--to help me get a sense of what it was to play a game of chess 800+ years ago when there were seemingly fewer distractions.

White Knight

About Charlemagne

During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.

Today he is regarded not only as the founding father of both French and German monarchies, but also as a Pater Europae (father of Europe): his empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Romans, and the Carolingian renaissance encouraged the formation of a common European identity.

Dubbed Charles le Magne "Charles the Great", he was named after his grandfather, Charles Martel. The name derives from Germanic *karlaz "free man, commoner", which gave German Kerl "man, guy" and English churl. His name, however, is first attested in its Latin form, "Carolus" or "Karolus."

In many European languages, the very word for "king" derives from Charles' name (e.g., Polish: król, Czech: král, Slovak: krá?, Hungarian: király, Lithuanian: karalius, Latvian: karalis, Russian: ??????, Macedonian: ????, Bulgarian: ????, Serbian: ????, Croatian: kralj, Turkish: kral)

Imperial diplomacy

Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen Cathedral.
In 799, Pope Leo III had been mistreated by the Romans, who tried to put out his eyes and tear out his tongue. Leo escaped and fled to Charlemagne at Paderborn, asking him to intervene in Rome and restore him. Charlemagne, advised by Alcuin of York, agreed to travel to Rome, doing so in November 800 and holding a council on 1 December. On 23 December Leo swore an oath of innocence. At Mass, on Christmas Day (25 December), when Charlemagne knelt at the altar to pray, the Pope crowned him Imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of the Romans") in Saint Peter's Basilica. In so doing, the Pope was effectively reviving the Western Roman Empire and nullifying the legitimacy of Empress Irene of Constantinople (Pope Leo III did not consider her a legitimate claimant to the Byzantine throne because she was a woman)