{"id":48697,"date":"2019-06-04T03:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=48697"},"modified":"2021-09-17T15:41:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T19:41:48","slug":"missing-isle-of-lewis-chess-piece-discovered-in-edinburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/06\/04\/missing-isle-of-lewis-chess-piece-discovered-in-edinburgh\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing Isle of Lewis chess piece discovered in Edinburgh"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s always irritating when you lose a chess piece, but this one’s been missing for a long, long time<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A medieval chess piece that was missing for almost 200 years had been unknowingly kept in a drawer by an Edinburgh family.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They had no idea that the object was one of the long-lost Lewis Chessmen – which could now fetch \u00a31m at auction.<\/p>\n

The chessmen were found on the Isle of Lewis in 1831 but the whereabouts of five pieces have remained a mystery.<\/p>\n

The Edinburgh family’s grandfather, an antiques dealer, had bought the chess piece for \u00a35 in 1964.<\/p>\n

He had no idea of the significance of the 8.8cm piece (3.5in), made from walrus ivory, which he passed down to his family.<\/p>\n

They have looked after it for 55 years without realising its importance, before taking it to Sotheby’s auction house in London.<\/p>\n

The Lewis Chessmen are among the biggest draws at the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

They are seen as an “important symbol of European civilisation” and have also seeped into popular culture, inspiring everything from children’s show Noggin The Nog<\/em> to part of the plot in Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sotheby’s expert Alexander Kader, who examined the piece for the family, said his “jaw dropped” when he realised what they had in their possession.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Colby Cosh<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always irritating when you lose a chess piece, but this one’s been missing for a long, long time: A medieval chess piece that was missing for almost 200 years had been unknowingly kept in a drawer by an Edinburgh family. They had no idea that the object was one of the long-lost Lewis Chessmen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,62,14,7],"tags":[288,1439,775,338,961],"class_list":["post-48697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-europe","category-gaming","category-history","tag-archaeology","tag-boardgames","tag-edinburgh","tag-scotland","tag-vikings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cFr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48699,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697\/revisions\/48699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}