Equipment

These are links to pages about gaming equipment -- the material stuff, rather than the rules and play of games.

Referenced from:

7 period board games, printed on fabric (Vendor, Equipment) -- A wonderfully useful little Spoonflower store that does print-on-demand of several common games that you can then sew into pillows or bags. (more)
A bit on the history of Courier Chess from The Chess Collector (History, Equipment) -- (more)
A lovely Goose board at the Met (Equipment) -- Photo of a 16th century Italian inlay board made from ebony and wood. (more)
A photo of the Ballinderry Game Board (Equipment, Archaeology) -- This is one of the most important archaeological finds relating to Tafl. (more)
Ancient Limerick hurling ball has its guts checked (Equipment) -- A news article describing a ca. 800 year old hurling ball, its history and construction. Not detailed, but interesting. (more)
Arjan Verwij's Dice Site (Equipment) -- Has photos of many different kinds of dice, including a large number of different period and pre-period dice. (more)
Balls! (Equipment, Reconstruction) -- A general page on the manufacture of game balls and some of the games played with them in period. (more)
Building the Board for the Game of the Four Seasons (Equipment) -- A nice step-by-step illustration of how to build a well-constructed board for the game. (more)
Count and Capture Games at the Museum of Games (Reconstruction, Archaeology, Equipment) -- This page has a good overview of the family; at the bottom are links to boards and rules from many different countries. (more)
Dagonell on Knucklebones (Equipment, Reconstruction) -- Includes Gomme's description of "Fivestones". (more)
Debora Marzec's reproduction game sets (Equipment) -- (Facebook) Photos of many games, generally made along period models. Quite useful for visualizing what the sets looked like -- they're nice stuff. See also Album 2. (more)
Eachna's Celtic Knucklebones Page (Equipment, Reconstruction) -- Has some nice practical information about crafting early sorts of dice, and a concise description of the Roman dicing game Tali. (more)
From Ur to Aseb: The Evolution of the Game of Twenty Squares (History, Equipment, Rules) -- A look into the Royal Game of Ur and the Egyptian game Aseb, and the historical relationships between them. (more)
Gluckhaus at The Reverend's Musings (Reconstruction, History, Equipment) -- A good quick description of the game, with a little history and illustrations of several boards. (more)
Illustration of the Kings on a Rhythmomachy board (Equipment) -- From Fulke's book (more)
Images of many board games (heavy on Goose) (Equipment, Facsimile) -- A substantial number of game boards, many (but not all) period and many (but not all) of them Goose variations (more)
Justin's reconstruction of Seven-Sided Backgammon (Reconstruction, Equipment) -- One of my prouder achievements, this reconstruction has caught on pretty widely. (more)
Kadon Enterprises Goose Set (Vendor, Equipment) -- The nicest commercially-available Game of the Goose set that I know. (more)
Laser-cutting a Rhythmomachy Board (Equipment) -- Pictures of a board made with modern laser-cutting tech, with links to the necessary files so that you can make one yourself if you have the right equipment. (more)
Making Seven-Sided Dice (Equipment) -- A description of how to make a well-constructed pentagonal-prism die, for use with Astrological Tables or Decimal Chess. (The article says that it also applies to Game of the Four Seasons, but that doesn't appear to be correct based on the Musser-Golladay translation.) (more)
Medieval Chess Pieces (Equipment) -- Images of a variety of period pieces, from collector Jon Crumiller. (more)
Merels at the Museum of Games (History, Equipment, Reconstruction) -- (more)
Michel Wolffauer's cheat sheet (Equipment) -- A one-page PDF illustrating the pieces of Shogi and how they each move. (more)
Period illustration of a Rhythmomachy board (Equipment) -- From Fulke's book (more)
Photo of a very nice Seven-Sided Backgammon Board (Equipment) -- (more)
Pre-Gebelin Tarot History (Equipment, History) -- A blog focusing on "The Moral Allegory of Tarot". It is a refreshing middle ground: explicitly skeptical about the occult side (much of which was an 18th century invention) but looking seriously at Tarot imagery as allegory. Highly opinionated and intriguing, and contains many images of less-known period decks. (more)
Probability in Sheep Knucklebone Replicas (Equipment) -- A quick statistical analysis conducted by MacGregor Historic Games (more)
Queen’s Guard gifts – Portable Ancient Board Games (Equipment) -- A blog post about creating a set of game boards. (more)
Rhythmomachy Basics (Reconstruction, Equipment) -- An introduction to the common concepts of the game (more)
SCA-appropriate Tarot decks (Equipment) -- Compiled by Hildegarde Stickerin. Note that this focuses more on pretty "art" decks, rather than the more typical everyday decks. Some of these decks are period, some are "period-style". (more)
Tali at the Roman Board Games site (Reconstruction, Archaeology, Equipment) -- URL via the Wayback Machine. (more)
Taxonomic map of Playing Cards (Equipment, History) -- A lovely map showing the evolution of the suits, by Lady Heather Hall. (more)
The Lewis Hoard of Gaming Pieces: A Re-examination of their Context, Meanings, Discovery and Manufacture (Archaeology, Equipment, History, Research) -- (more)