Luxury Armenian Chess and Backgammon Table with Tree of Life

Luxury Armenian Chess and Backgammon Table with Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is worked in bronze here rather than cut into the wood — set into the corners and the drawer front, catching the light against the carved lattice around it. Closed, the piece is a chess table with an inlaid board on cabriole legs. Lift the hinged top and it opens into an Armenian backgammon table, bronze checkers and the dice cup stowed underneath. One object, two games, and nothing to fetch from another room.

A tree with its roots showing is the right symbol for a table like this one. It is the piece a family keeps: the chess table the children learn on, the backgammon table the arguments happen over, the thing that ends up in somebody's house forty years from now. The drawer at the front holds the spare pieces, and the legs come off when it has to move.

What's Included

• Folding chess and backgammon table on carved cabriole legs
• 32 chess pieces in beech and walnut wood
• 32 bronze backgammon checkers
• Dice cup and dice
• Front storage drawer
• Carrying bag

Specifications

• Closed: 11.8 x 23.6" / 30 x 60 cm
• Open playing field: 23.6 x 23.6" / 60 x 60 cm
• Height: 27.6" / 70 cm
• Weight: 13 kg / 28.7 lb
• Table material: solid beech wood
• Chess pieces: beech and walnut wood
• Backgammon checkers: bronze and wood
• Removable legs, packs into its own crate
• Handmade in Armenia

Why You'll Love It

• One table, two games: a chess board on top, a full backgammon field inside
• Bronze Tree of Life set into the corners and the drawer front
• Carved lattice running across the frame and legs
• A front drawer for the spare pieces
• Compact 11.8 x 23.6" / 30 x 60 cm footprint for a living room or study

The Tree of Life

Armenians have been carving this tree for well over a thousand years — on khachkars, on church doors, on the front of chests meant to be handed down. The idea has never needed explaining: roots that hold, branches that keep going, and the family somewhere in between. In bronze on a games table it reads as a quiet promise that the table is not the temporary kind.

A Gift Worth Giving

For a new house, a golden anniversary, a son who has just moved abroad. It comes with its own carrying bag, and because every table is carved and finished by hand, the one you send is not identical to any other.