If chess is 'the supreme board game', then it deserves to be played on boards like these

With his Gaelic name and love of board games, 6ft 3in, russet-bearded furniture-maker Eion Gibbs bears more than a passing resemblance to his medieval predecessors, those Norse-Gaels who whiled away the dark northern evenings playing chess and backgammon in their chilly longhouses and castle halls.

Based in the Highlands, where he was brought up and now works in a converted cow byre, Eion makes furniture and fittings for private houses, whisky companies, pubs and clubs, but his speciality is beautifully crafted board games.

His trademark pieces are of Scottish elm inlaid with dark and pale walnut and sycamore, backgammon points recessed into the slab, chequerboards laid flush within a border of oak from the surrounding woodlands. Contrasting with these geometrical veneers, the gnarled cracks and swirling grains of the burr wood impart a fashionably rustic vibe, albeit with bark removed and any impurities sanded down to a silky finish. The backgammon boards are cut with little pockets for holding dice and counters and a recess for that essential accoutrement, the whisky tumbler. They suggest the hand of a seasoned player who understands the particulars of these ancient games, as well as of a cabinetmaker with an inventive approach to his craft.

As Neil MacGregor observed when he chose the famous 12th-century hoard exhumed from a Lewis sandbank as one of his 100 objects for A History of the World, ‘every chess set shows a society at war… the way the pieces are named and shaped tells us a great deal about how that society functions’. Discovered by a Hebridean crofter in 1831, the so-called Lewis Chessmen were almost certainly made in Norway. Symbols of wealth and power, they were exquisitely carved from walrus tusks to show off the taste and intellect of their owners — strongmen at the centre of a sophisticated network of cultural and trading links. A modern version, The Balloch Chessmen, now takes pride of place in the Banner Hall of Taymouth Castle, Perthshire, the latest flagship property of its proud owner, American real estate and private-resort developer Discovery Land.

Eion’s concept for the Balloch commission, worked up in consultation with the clients and heraldry and genealogy expert Gordon MacGregor, was to reimagine what literary chess enthusiast Martin Amis called ‘the supreme board game’ as a set piece of rival clansmen. Flanked by little towerhouses with pepperpot turrets, the Campbells and the MacGregors confront each other across a battleground of burr elm, sycamore and walnut. The scene evokes the bitter 16th-century feud that saw ‘Grey’ Colin Campbell of Glenorchy evict Clan Gregor from its lands of Balloch and build a castle on the site of the present pile. Thus the new chessboard connects directly to its historic location at the head of Loch Tay.

The figures were designed and modelled by Edinburgh-based sculptor Hector Guest, who researched the arms and dress of the period and studied a portrait of grey-bearded Colin in the Black Book of Taymouth. The kings and queens are the key historic characters: Colin and his wife, Katherine Ruthven, the MacGregor chief, whom Colin beheaded in 1570, and his wife, Marion, confusingly a Campbell. Hector modelled the Protestant Campbell and Catholic MacGregor bishops on himself and Eion; other pieces share features with friends and family. The pawns are charging Highlanders brandishing halberds, latter-day equivalents of the Scandinavian shock-troops, or berserkers, who stand menacingly chewing their shields in the Lewis set.

Hector took inspiration from the intricately observed human characteristics of those earlier pieces, but his figures are more animated than the glum-faced Lewis Chessmen and are made of bronze. The Powderhall Bronze foundry found it a real challenge to cast such dynamic, detailed figures on this small scale, he notes. The courtly Campbells have a polished browned-bronze patina, the rugged MacGregors a weathered green finish achieved with copper and ferric nitrate. The two craftsmen are now planning chessboards with other historical themes, such as the Romans vs the Carthaginians and Wellington vs Napoleon.

Eion credits his early love of carpentry to watching a cottage being restored near his home. ‘After school, I’d go and hang out with the joiners. They’d give me scrap wood and nails and I’d happily bash things together. I was only about six, but I really looked up to them and I think that’s how it stuck in my mind as a cool profession.’ At prep school, he spent a lot of time ‘hiding away’ in the woodworking shop, where he made an electric-doored garage for his remote-control car, several dog beds and a Scotsman clock with a ticking sporran.

Even better was the ‘amazing design and technology department’ at Harrow School, Middlesex, which had ‘every machine you could think of. There was very little induction; they simply let you get on with it, although the teachers and technicians would always help you out. I loved playing around there, making what I wanted and learning new skills; it was also a great way of avoiding sport’.

Eion imagined he might become a journalist and took an English Literature degree before spending a year in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor, walking from the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands to Istanbul, Turkey. Moving to Edinburgh, he found himself working for a ghost-tour company, but ‘I wasn’t scary enough, so my boss, Davy the Ghost, moved me to ticket sales’.

In 2018, he enrolled on the professional course at Chippendale School of Furniture in East Lothian. ‘Years of school hobbying had stimulated my interest in working with wood, but I realised I had no real knowledge of cabinetmaking and the school offered a really good grounding. They give you a small taste of so many aspects and techniques and, in some ways, it’s an education in confidence, because you go there for less than a year and come away thinking perhaps you could start your own business — which many do, learning what is necessary along the way.’

It was when living in Edinburgh at this time that his enthusiasm for board games grew. ‘A few times a week, I’d get together with a diverse group of friends — a politician, a programmer, an engineer — and we’d play Risk, Catan or Perudo. Risk, in particular, took me back to my childhood. It’s a game people famously fall out over and it can last all day. Nowadays, it’s become a bit gimmicky — there’s even a Game of Thrones version — but essentially it remains unchanged.’

One of his prize pieces is a brass-trimmed chest containing a secret Risk game. ‘The client already had one of my backgammon boards and asked me what I felt about doing a Risk table,’ recalls Eion, who, in a nod to the military-expedition theme, came up with a design inspired by campaign furniture. ‘I’ve always loved the flushness and compact modularity of those pieces; the way they can be separated into different, easily transportable parts.’ A key hidden in a drawer unlocks the leather board that forms a table top, which can be flipped over to reveal a map of the world.

It’s a lovely looking thing: a puzzle of more than 200 pieces, the continents veneered in indigenous timbers — South American bloodwood, African koto, Australian walnut, English oak — and set in a sea of rippled sycamore. Drawers are equipped with card and piece holders, coasters, a leather-lined rolling tray and bottles with glasses.

Eion is set on making a hexagonal-tiled board for Catan, a game of trading empires that lasts only 40 minutes, but, he assures me, is utterly gripping. One unanticipated aspect of his creations is their increasing relevance to world affairs — yet it seems it was ever thus. Those ancient chess pieces, after all, reflect the terrifying power and reach of the Vikings.