Alexandra Llewellyn fell in love with backgammon at the age of 9 on a trip to Cairo with her step-grandfather. Later in life, after training as a fine artist, she made that game—and many more—her career, designing over 400 one-off sets since launching her namesake company in 2010. Today, Llewellyn estimates that roughly 70 percent of her business comes from bespoke commissions, which she says help stoke her creativity. Via her online store, she also offers a small stock of backgammon sets, playing cards, and poker kits, all of which are as aesthetically pleasing as they are entertaining.
“I started by making these backgammon boards partly because it’s the oldest recorded board game in the world,” Llewellyn says. “I love the idea of playing around with the format of it, but also using it as a vehicle to work with a lot of different materials.”
At the invitation of The Vault, the company recently introduced a three-in-one set—an innovation that unites chess, backgammon, and draughts (or checkers, on this side of the pond)—in a customizable limited edition inspired by the cosmos. “I always think of playing games late into the night, and the celestial theme just sort of lent itself so perfectly,” Llewellyn explains. “The design itself is based on the heavens and the stars, but also that feeling of depth and the vastness of it.”
Marquetry, a technique that cuts and fits wood veneers together like a jigsaw puzzle, has become a hallmark of her work. For this project, wispy clouds and shimmering stars are crafted from precious woods and metals, then individually inlaid by hand, while the game’s doubling cube contains a sliver of martian meteorite.
“All these materials, the light hits them in different ways,” Llewellyn notes. “I designed the set envisioning that the moon is above it, catching the clouds below and replicating these wonderful, starry nights from wherever you play in the world.”
Several U.K. workshops help fabricate her boards from start to finish, including cabinetmakers, leather specialists, and polishers. Limited to just 10 examples, the Celestial Backgammon, Chess & Draughts Set takes roughly four months to produce and is priced at $30,000. “The whole point is to bring people together,” Llewellyn says of her game-board business, “to enjoy human interactivity, and to make memories.”
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1. Material Selection
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Before any studio work can happen, Llewellyn must gather the raw materials. She selected lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl to craft the 30 backgammon playing pieces and collaborated with suppliers in Scotland to source the ideal leather for the board. “For this design, it really started with the materials, because I knew the concept was going to be the night sky,” she says. “So it was pulling together materials that worked really beautifully and have that luminosity for these stars to shine.”
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2. Shape Cutting
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd At the marquetry workshop, miniature shapes are cut from a piece of blue-dyed sycamore. At the same time, hundreds of tiny stars are fashioned from mother-of-pearl, abalone, brass, copper, and silver to be inlaid in the wood. “The beauty of marquetry, which really comes into play in this piece, is the way the light hits it,” Llewellyn says.
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3. Compression
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Next, a roller evenly distributes adhesive to a hardwood board for the marquetry to be pressed. The tiny shapes are assembled on top as if they were a giant puzzle, and the design is then compressed at 104 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes at a pressure of about 70 psi.
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4. Cutting Leather
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Calf leather is measured and cut into thin strips to line the removable trays that will hold the backgammon playing pieces. A cabinetmaker then assembles the pressed marquetry panels to create the game box—complete with two secret compartments that Llewellyn likes to include just for fun—and uses sandpaper to smooth the edges.
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5. Inlay Lacquering
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Next it’s off to the polisher, who seals the inlay work with lacquer to accentuate the colors. “We tested different lacquer finishes,” Llewellyn says. “I wanted to keep an open-grain finish so that you could see and feel the grain of the wood but also have a gloss to it, to bring out the luster in the blue sycamore and in all of the stars.”
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6. Chess Components
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd For the chess portion, Llewellyn acquired triple-weight pieces from House of Staunton and finished them with lapis-blue and ivory-cream lacquers to complement the board’s colors. The backgammon playing pieces—which are also used to play checkers—are encased in a gold-metal finish and fitted with a leather base to protect the marquetry surfaces.
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7. Cube Material
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Martian meteorite, sourced from a reputable dealer, is encapsulated in resin to create the doubling cube. “I’ve made doubling cubes with explosions of pigment and things like that, but for this one, because it’s about outer space and the universe, we’ve got a bit of meteorite that fell from Mars, which is really cool,” Llewellyn explains.
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8. Final Touches
Image Credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn Design Ltd Before the set is shipped, all the elements are packaged in what Llewellyn calls the making room back at her London studio. “This board can be commissioned specifically for someone, whether that means changing the colors or putting specific star constellations that are appropriate to their zodiac sign,” she says. “That’s the nature of what we do.”
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