In my introductory blog post for North House Folk School, I described my work as the intersecting point between the three virtues of Craft, Land, and Play. It is through these same three lenses that I would like to share with you some of the projects I have been working on for the past three months of the Artisan Development Program. I will also be bringing these games to the Games Night Event at North House Folk School on January 2nd! I’ll see you there!
Spellicans
🪓 Craft: This is a set of Spellicans, which is an older word for the game of Pick-Up-Sticks. I carved them from splinters of Birch left over from other projects. Lauren Newby and Alex Blust carved a few sticks as well! They are colored with milk paint, and finished with tung oil.
🌱 Land: Even the smallest pieces of harvested wood can be used for play! Every bit of the tree can be made into something wonderful.
🏓 Play: If you haven't recently played a game of Spellicans, a.k.a. Pick-Up-Sticks, do yourself a favor and snap out a quick round. It is so compelling for such a simple game. When you're playing a game of Spellicans, and someone pulls off a delicate and fortuitous pick-up-stick maneuver, you can't help but cheer them on. It's a riot.
Three Man's Morris
🪓 Craft: This is the game of Three Man's Morris, also known as Nine Holes, and is known to be at least a 4,000-year-old game. As you can see, I was experimenting with making bark canisters with Willow bark rather than Birch bark. I would say I was partially successful, and further research is needed.
🌱 Land: My home is in southern Minnesota, too south to have any Birch trees, so I don't have a regular supply of Birch bark. I do live near groves and groves of River Willow, however, which provides a fine strong bark as well! I was curious to try and apply the Birch bark canister techniques to the Willow bark, to make better use of the resources around me. Somehow there are always new craft frontiers to explore no matter where you look!
🏓 Play: Three Man's Morris is one of my all-time favorite games. It is very similar to Tic-Tac-Toe, except that each player only has three game pieces. Once all the pieces are used up, you and your opponent take turns moving your pieces around the board! It's got a bit more challenge and strategy than Tic-Tac-Toe but it's just as easy to learn and engaging for all ages.
Nine Man's Morris
🪓 Craft: During Family Weekend at North House, Anna Sharratt and I taught a kid's class on making Nine Man's Morris boards. The students stamped, decorated, and sewed their game boards, carved their game pieces, and made rope drawstrings for their game board bags! It was lots of fun, and the kids created some very wonderful objects.
🌱 Land: Our students foraged for some stone game pieces along the lakeshore, and carved other game pieces from locally harvested branches. I hope that they will go on to make more games and play objects from their local landscape. There is so much fun out in the world if only you know where to find it!
🏓 Play: Nine Man's Morris is similarly ancient to Three Man's Morris, but the game is a bit bigger and some more brain cells are needed to secure a victory. The game begins simply with an empty board, but quickly grows in complexity as pieces claim open sections. I can attest that entire lunch breaks have gone by without anyone touching their food because they were so locked in to a game of Nine Man's Morris!
Nerfball
🪓 Craft: This is a waxed canvas throwing football stuffed with Lauren Newby's sawdust and fletched with a spurt of wild-foraged feathers. The resemblance to a sweet potato was totally accidental.
🌱 Land: As I wrote about in my introductory blog post, one of my goals is to replace plastic toys with toys made from natural materials. Plastic is an incredibly useful material, but as we know, it is both toxic and environmentally harmful. Why bother making toys out of such a material when we have so many other durable, beautiful, and biodegradable materials at hand?
🏓 Play: This little guy flies straight and fast. Great for throwing at your friends when they're not looking (don't worry, sawdust is pretty soft).
Spinning Tops
🪓 Craft: Tops! Traditionally tops are made on a lathe, but I am usually more drawn to crafts that can be done with hand tools, good background music, and no electric bill, rather than the whirring of expensive motors. The top on the left is made of Birch, the top on the right is Pine, and both are brightly colored with milk paint.
🌱 Land: Like the Spellicans, these small tops were made from wooden pieces left over from larger projects. I do my best not to hoard offcuts - the eternal temptation of the woodworker - but I love to find fun in these little pieces. Twigs and billets that would be otherwise scrapped can find expression in little fidgets like these.
🏓 Play: What I've learned is that you shouldn't ever own just one top. It is essential that you spin two tops at a time, so they can battle.
Fox and Geese
🪓 Craft: This is a venerable old game known as Fox and Geese. In the early American colonies, people would often make this game from old lumber or off-cuts of siding planks. There are more elaborate boards in the world, of course, but I am drawn to this game's expression as a common folk craft.
🌱 Land: I made these geese game pieces from Curly Willow, an ornamental variety of Willow which grows in Dr. Seuss-esque curls and twists. This kind of tree has a tendency to sprout aggressively and lose many branches over the winter, and so it requires a great deal of pruning to keep healthy. This means that harvesting material does not come at the expense of the tree, but rather like shearing a sheep or cutting sweetgrass, trimming the extra material leads to further abundance in the future.
🏓 Play: Fox and Geese is a game of many-against-one. The geese can be eaten by the fox, but the fox can be trapped by the horde of geese. This game is a very effective teaching tool which demonstrates the power of teamwork, cooperation, and our multiplicative strength when we work together.
The Bear Game
🪓 Craft: This Roman Bear Game set was experimental in many ways. I painted the board on the suede side of leather using walnut ink and elderberry ink from Erica Spitzer-Rasmussen's inkmaking class, a technique I had never tried before. It worked great. Some of the game pieces are bone, which I attempted to scrimshaw, also a new experience for me. The three standing pieces are kolrosed Maple, which were of course inspired by the kolrosing of Liesl Chatman. In kolrosing, too, I am a beginner.
🌱 Land: Both the Maple and bone for this game set were found in the local woods. Bone is a wonderful craft material, and often outlasts artificially manufactured materials. Bone becomes more burnished and seasoned with age, just as all good objects should be. A well-crafted bone tool or game piece can easily outlast its maker. What a wonder!
🏓 Play: This variation of the Bear Game, I'm sorry to say, is much too easily won. There are three hunters who pursue the bear around the board, but after showing the game to a few friends, I was distressed to discover that there is one strategy that wins every time. Luckily, there are many many many variations of the Bear Game, and rest assured I will be prototyping all of them.
Winter Games Workshop
🪓 Craft: During Winterer's Gathering this year, I had the opportunity to run two sessions of a game workshop. Folks came and played with all of the handcrafted game sets I've been making, and created their own game set to take home. We used linoleum prints to stamp game boards onto thick paper, which was folded into an envelope to hold the game pieces and rulebooks for a complete pocket-sized game set.
🌱 Land: While all of the materials for this activity were purchased, rather than harvested from the landscape, I am hopeful that the games we made at Winterer's Gathering will find their way into Duluth packs in the Boundary Waters, in hiking backpacks on the Superior Trail, and be passed around the campfire. Unplug from the digital world, fill your pockets with games, and get out into the wild green.
🏓 Play: I had a great time watching so many people enjoy so many fun games from so many countries. I brought my own handmade renditions of ancient and medieval games from Korea, England, China, West Africa, Ireland, Egypt, and more. Engaging with these global traditions of play can help us to embrace our common love of fun, and togetherness, and achieving absolutely crushing victories against your friends and family.
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