The book of games or Libro de los Juegos is a fascinating medieval manuscript. It was commisioned by the king of Castille, Alphonso X "the wise". The book was completed in 1283, the year before Alfonso’s death.
The manuscript consists of 98
leaves, with 150 beautifully coloured drawings, ten of them
occupying whole pages. Among the games described in the manuscript are chess (games of the brain), dice (games of luck), backgammon and variants (games of both luck and brains), nine-men-morris, and some others.
Like many others, we wanted to recreate some of these medieval games with their boards. Interestingly, three illuminations in the manuscript actually show how the games are made, together with their (woodworking) tools: