The cacophonous, chaotic choir of birds and crickets outside reaches this little ambient from one small window placed on the east wall: the window, embedded among bricks and stones confusedly placed one onto the other to form walls with undulated surfaces which seem to dance and shake despite they’re heavy and still, ungracefully framing a thick square of glass, darkened by layers of smoke accumulated in the years, is open, to let a little amount a sunlight seep in, like a not so welcome intruder.
Swarms of particles of dust crawl, lost and confused, in the blade of light seeping in and cutting the room in two distinct portions which would seem belonging to the same space, if the separation wasn’t so neat, and an indecision might take form in one’s mind, about whether those particles got life from the flood of light, whether they got blinded by the same, and, finally, whether they’re struggling to escape from the darkness they were just freed from, or rather to pull the two dark sides of the same cut, to draw them together once again and bury themselves in the obscurity.
But it’s impossible to resist the curiosity to see what this cut of light is rendering visible, so it just takes to look and let it amaze the eyes.
Resting on a table, as much robust as roughly cut and assembled, there is a large chessboard of wooden checkers, made of palisander and maple, placed so to alternate dark and light: the surface of the board has already been polished and lacquered, and dimly shines under the sunlight.
But if it was placed in the embrace of the shadows, we would rather see the reflections of the objects placed on it vaguely mirrored on its surface.
The sculptures, similarly obtained from the two different kinds of wood, big enough to fit in the palm of an adult person so to give to anyone handling them a sense of might, are the various chess pieces, and are executed in such a way to find a good balance between fine artistic sense and a certain slightly rough stylization, so to confer them an austere tone, almost wild, as if they were ancient pieces done by someone expert enough to do something good, but who could have reached an excellent level pf artistry with a better education in fine arts.
The general theme of the sets revolves around a more than classic army, with king and queen, and paws and towers, but with a twist of imagination, like it could have been born from the imagination of a child, or rather of an adult who never really grew up.
The pawns, in their squat structure, with their absent expression under a basic helmet just drafted, as if the player had not to fall in the risk to get affectionate to any of them, show, on their back, the surprising hint of a spiralling squirrel tail.
The knights, both armed of sword and shield, the latter with a bas-relief impression of an acorn, have their head shaped like that of a boar, with pointy fangs reaching proudly above the snout and the mouth open like shouting before a battle, to intimidate the adversary.
The bishops, tall and solemn, holding in one hand a book made up of leaves, and in the other sun and moon interlaced in a passionless kiss, couldn’t have their heads other than surmounted by the majestic antlers of stags; their expression is nonchalant, as if they could see far throughout the mists concealing the future and nothing could surprise them anymore.
The rooks, of course, couldn’t be anything else than two massive oak trees, with the crowns reaching far and the roots surfacing from the ground and being equally large; on one of the two trees, though, the artist enjoyed carving three holes, so to give to it human semblances, those of a tormented soul howling its despair; the crowns are covered with elaborate etchings to suggest a myriad of leaves, and one woulf expect to see some wooden birds peeking through the foliage.
The queens are figures at a first sight representing a woman, with a large gown, the hands courteously overlapping on the womb, a prosperous chest adorned by one braid on the left side, and by a big lock of hair on the right; but by looking at the face, the point snout of a wolf is what will show itself, with the mouth wide open, as if ready to bite; and by looking at the rear of the gown, a gorgeous tail – more of a fox, actually, than of a wolf – will confirm the peculiar nature of these queens.
The kings… the king, actually, for there is just one, on the chessboard… the king, it’s a mighty grizzly bear, whose hair draws its bristly consistence from the jagged nature of the sculpted wood, as if the hammer and the chisel had fought, more than cooperated, on that particular piece; it is standing, rampant, roaring, with one arm holding a sceptre against the belly and the other lifted in the sky, as if to command its army, or to ask the help of the sky.
The missing bear king, the lighter one, cannot be found, no matter for how long the floor is examined.
And this doesn’t happen because it wasn’t sculpted, as the whole set was actually ready to be given to the client who commissioned it, but rather because the carpenter’s son, fascinated by that light brown bear like he never saw one similar in the forest around, took it, to play that beautiful game fed by the imagination consisting in making up glorious adventures, whose main character is that peculiar and noble beast, but lost the statuette in the brook, after he fell trying to cross it, imagining it was a roaring sea full of monsters.
Hasty and thoughtless like any other child, but wise enough to understand the best tactic to adopt, he confessed it immediately to his father, who, after having grunted louder than a grizzly bear, dragged him to the river, so that they both might look for the lost king bear in the rushing rivulets of waters.
This is certainly a pity, and one can’t help but wishing them to find the precious piece of art as quickly as possible, but it can’t be denied that such circumstance, the absence of anyone from the room, gives to the observer some more time to stay and keep having a look.
Around the room there are, scattered, on the floor or one onto another, pieces of various kinds of woods, providing the chance to experience vast palettes of colors, textures and veins, smells; many of them are partially sculpted, here hinting a running leg, there a mouth open in a cry, there a solemn face, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to grab a chisel and finally free those being left there trapped, and, even more, that to wonder whether they were left there intentionally, perhaps victims of the powerful spell of a witch actually enclosing them in the wood, and this would be quite a change of perspective; pieces of branches or slices of trees abund, and quantities of wood shavings on the floor are enough to let suspect that it hasn’t been wiped for long, perhaps surrendering to the unavoidable fall of such remains; and, of course, the most bizarre, at least for the neophyte, variety of tools: straight or curve, wooden or metallic or composite, from small to large, intuitive in its function or rather abstruse.
The two crowds, that of the pieces of wood and that of the tools, one of natural origin, the other put together by man, project strange shadows piercing the light, and, at once, by the shadows, from the obtrusive light, are protected, and with the dust dancing in the sunrays, as much lifeless as lively, it’s impossible not to imagine those as all figures of strange scrambled beings, deeply sleeping, yet ready to open their eyes and shake off the numbness from their bodies, just waiting to be woken up by a counter-spell to break the spell cast by the sorceress; and in this aerial atmosphere, so neatly divided between brightness and obscurity, as if the world was an immense chessboard, it seems perfectly logical to imagine the two sets playing a chess game, who knows whether taking, each one, one different side, or rather mixing with each other, in an allegiance whose secret dynamics are too hard to guess, for whoever doesn’t count their age in rings.
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