Marquetry: The Old Art Inside a Backgammon Board

Most people who play backgammon never think about the board. They think about the dice, the next move, the opponent across the table. But the board has been doing quiet work the whole time. Its long triangles guide the eye around the field. Its colours tell you, without counting, where one point ends and the next begins. And on a Manopoulos board, the way those colours are made has roots in one of the oldest decorative crafts in European furniture: marquetry.

What marquetry is

Marquetry is the art of making a picture or pattern from pieces of wood veneer. Veneer is wood sliced thin, thin enough to be cut with a knife or a fine saw. The craftsman chooses woods for their colour and grain, cuts each piece to shape and fits the pieces together edge to edge, like a jigsaw with no gaps. The finished sheet is then laid onto a solid base, pressed, and finished so that the surface reads as a single, smooth plane.

Manopoulos describes it simply as an art that flourished in Europe in the sixteenth century. Cabinetmakers used it on tables, chests and cabinets to create flowers, landscapes and geometric designs out of nothing but the natural colours of different trees. No paint, no dye: the contrast comes from the wood itself.

It is worth separating marquetry from two close relatives. Inlay sets pieces of one material into cavities cut into another, solid surface. Parquetry, the word familiar from floors, uses marquetry’s methods for strictly geometric patterns. A backgammon board sits comfortably between them: geometric in its layout, but made in the spirit of marquetry, with woods chosen and matched for how they look side by side.

Why a backgammon board suits it

Look at the layout of a backgammon board and you will see why the two belong together. There are 24 points, twelve on each side, each a long, narrow triangle. They alternate in colour. They meet a central bar that divides the field into four quarters. Each player moves 15 checkers around this track, and the whole design exists to make that journey easy to read at a glance.

That is exactly the kind of problem marquetry solves well. Two woods of clearly different tone, cut into precise triangles and laid against a third wood for the field, give a board that is both functional and handsome. The contrast has to be strong enough to read in dim light at the end of an evening, but not so harsh that it tires the eye. Choosing the woods is the first design decision, and on a board it is also the most visible one.

Reading the woods

The Manopoulos range works with a short list of species, and each has its own character.

• Oak is pale and open-grained, with a warm, honey tone. It lightens a board and gives it an airy feel.
• Walnut is a mid to dark brown, often with soft, wavy figure. It is the classic furniture wood of Europe and reads as quietly traditional.
• Wenge is very dark, close to black, with fine straight lines. It makes a board look graphic and modern.
• Mahogany has a reddish warmth that deepens with time. It brings to mind old libraries and ships’ cabins.

The Oak-Walnut board shown with this story pairs the lightest of these with one of the darker: an oak field with black and walnut points. The result is bright and open, with the points standing out crisply against the pale ground. Its siblings rearrange the same vocabulary. The Walnut board carries black and oak points on walnut; the Wenge board sets walnut and oak points on wenge; the Mahogany board has black and oak points on mahogany.

Hand and machine in Thebes

Since 2000 Manopoulos has worked from a factory in Thebes, in Boeotia, that completed a long programme of technological modernisation. The house did not use that moment to abandon hand work. Traditional techniques are kept alongside modern production, and each is used where it makes the most sense.

Precision cutting and repetition belong to the machine. Judgement belongs to the hand: which sheet of veneer to use, how the grain should run, whether a join is clean, whether the finish is right. The boards are cut, veneered and finished by hand in the Thebes workshop, then fitted with brass-finish hinges and clasp so that the case folds closed around its pieces.

The range is made in two ways, and it is worth being clear about the difference. The limited editions carry true inlaid veneer work, produced in small numbers. The replica boards, including the Oak-Walnut, are veneered cases whose playing field is printed and sealed. They reproduce the classic marquetry layout on a smooth, durable surface designed to take thousands of rolls of the dice and the constant slide of checkers. For a board that will be played every week, that durability is a real advantage.

Imperfection as a signature

Manopoulos is candid about one thing that surprises some buyers. Natural wood cannot be free of imperfections. Grain runs unevenly. Shades differ from one sheet of veneer to the next, and from one board to another of the same model. The house treats this as part of the character of the material and as proof of its authenticity.

This is the old logic of marquetry too. The craftsman never worked with a uniform material. He worked with trees, each one different, and his skill lay in turning that variety into a pattern that holds together. A board with a slightly darker quarter or a knot of figure near the bar is not a mistake. It is a reminder that what you are playing on was once growing.

Choosing your pattern

El Laguito Cigars carries the Manopoulos backgammon range and delivers it anywhere in Canada. The replica boards come in Oak-Walnut, Walnut and Wenge in four sizes, and Mahogany in the largest size. Each set includes 30 wooden checkers and two dice, with dice cups on the two larger sizes.

If you are drawn to the look of the old craft, start with colour. Oak-Walnut for brightness, Walnut for tradition, Wenge for contrast, Mahogany for warmth. If you want to see marquetry at its most ambitious, the limited editions in burl and pearl and in walnut tree trunk have their own story later in this journal. And once your board is home, the story on caring for a wooden game board will help keep its colours clear for the long run.