Luxury Walnut Backgammon Set - Armenian Alphabet

Luxury Walnut Backgammon Set - Armenian Alphabet

Not a letter. Not a monogram. The whole alphabet — all thirty-nine of them, in order, master-carved in deep relief across the walnut lid of this Armenian backgammon set. Which means, if you want to think about it that way, that every Armenian word ever written is somewhere on this board already: every name, every prayer, every letter home, every argument, all of it in pieces waiting to be assembled. Mesrop Mashtots set those shapes down in 405 AD and nobody has needed to improve them since.

Carving them is a different order of difficulty from carving an eagle. A pattern repeats and forgives; letters do not. There are thirty-nine separate problems here, each one a shape that every single Armenian alive knows by heart, and any one of them cut a millimetre wrong would be spotted instantly by a child. The carver worked them into walnut, the darkest and least forgiving wood in the workshop, and let the deep relief throw its own shadow so the letters lift off the ground the way ink lifts off a page.

Then it opens. The clasps release, the bronze hinges swing, and underneath the entire written history of a language is a full 23.6" / 60 cm playing field where two people will spend the evening saying most of those words out loud. That is the pleasure of this luxury walnut backgammon board: it is a serious object about a serious thing, and it exists to be used by a family that will teach the next one to read those letters anyway.

What's Included

• Backgammon board with bronze hinges and clasps
• 32 checkers made from beech and walnut wood
• A pair of dice and a carrying bag

Specifications

• Folded: 30 x 60 cm / 11.8 x 23.6"
• Open playing field: 60 x 60 cm / 23.6 x 23.6"
• Weight: 5 kg / 11 lb
• Wood: solid walnut, with bronze hinges and clasps
• Handmade in Armenia

Why It Stands Out

• The complete Armenian alphabet — all thirty-nine letters — master-carved in deep relief
• Cut into solid walnut, the wood the workshop keeps for its best work
• A carved border framing the whole composition
• A luxury walnut backgammon board built on the single thing Armenians never lost

A Gift For a Family That Reads

Give it to the grandparents who taught the alphabet, or to the parents about to. Somebody small will eventually stand at the table and read the letters off the lid one at a time, out loud, slowly — and that will be worth more than the game played on top of it.