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1145.—Playing at Draughts (Harleian MS. 4431)details

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1145.—Playing at Draughts (Harleian MS. 4431) more

knights, games, christmas, greyscale

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Image title: 1145.—Playing at Draughts (Harleian MS. 4431)
Source: Knight, Charles: “Old England: A Pictorial Museum” (1845)
Place shown: none
Keywords: knights, games, christmas, greyscale
Status: out of copyright (called public domain in the USA), hence royalty-free stock image for all purposes usage credit requested
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Two men in mediƦval clothing [US: medieval] sit with a draughts [US: drafts or checkers] board balance between their knees. Two other men, one a knight in armour, the other perhaps a page boy, watch on.

Harleian MS. 4431 is Christine de Pizan’s collected works.

Draughts (Fig. 1145) and chess were amusements of the higher ranks. The circular board (Fig. 1148) is peculiar; the chess-men differed somewhat in form and name from the ordinary chess-men.” (p. 334)

Dimensions: 63 x 65mm (2.5 x 2.6 inches)
Filename: tn/1145-Playing-at-Draughts-q75-497x500.jpg
Scanner dpi: 2400

Comments:

Added by Bilbo on Sat May 19 15:24:05 2012

Although the game is listed as draughts, and in the above illustration appears to be so, the fact that one of the players is holding a bishop made me suspicious. So I checked the original MS and found that the original illustration is of a chess game. Why this was changed, who knows?
I am trying to track down the origin of draughts (to find out if it is actually medieval) and there is a lot of this misleading information about. Be careful out there.

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