My copies of 5 of the Lewis Chessmen were purchased many years ago from the British Museum shop & have long been a source of great pleasure to my wife & myself. However, I have never been able to understand why the queen should be wearing an expression of such sorrow & sadness, that was until I had an accident & dropped them on the floor. After staring at them for a while I saw
a possible answer to the question. This was more easy to picture than explain, so as an ex-film lighting cameraman I set them up in order to illustrate the situation. I had two 60w reading lamps for lighting - not much ! The real problem was providing mood & atmosphere to the scene. This was improved by getting two dining room chairs, placing them about three feet apart behind the items, 'steal' a roll of greaseproof paper from the kitchen & sellotape a section of this between the chairs, so providing myself with a back projection screen, upon which, after reclaiming an old slide projector & locating a 35mm. slide with a ghastly lurid scene of a sunset, I was able to provide a real Wagnerian touch to the scene.
A print was made. I kept it as a record of the scene but that was all - until last year. Two big exhibitions of the Lewis Chessmen, the BM in London & another in Edinburgh. Once againn more 'chatter' about the queen. This time I decided to make my contribution. Off went a copy of my version to the British Museum - back came an answer from the ' Curator of Medieval Collections.'
Apparently they were delighted with the picture - but, there can be NO definitive answer to questions of this nature. Rather like solving the reason regarding the smile on the face of the Sphinx, we don't know & would perhaps rather not know.
However, my real pleasure came from his final point, would I give permission for the museum to make use of the picture - of course!!
I'm in a bit of a mess in setting up the actual photo on this web page so have provided another one to click on.
a possible answer to the question. This was more easy to picture than explain, so as an ex-film lighting cameraman I set them up in order to illustrate the situation. I had two 60w reading lamps for lighting - not much ! The real problem was providing mood & atmosphere to the scene. This was improved by getting two dining room chairs, placing them about three feet apart behind the items, 'steal' a roll of greaseproof paper from the kitchen & sellotape a section of this between the chairs, so providing myself with a back projection screen, upon which, after reclaiming an old slide projector & locating a 35mm. slide with a ghastly lurid scene of a sunset, I was able to provide a real Wagnerian touch to the scene.
A print was made. I kept it as a record of the scene but that was all - until last year. Two big exhibitions of the Lewis Chessmen, the BM in London & another in Edinburgh. Once againn more 'chatter' about the queen. This time I decided to make my contribution. Off went a copy of my version to the British Museum - back came an answer from the ' Curator of Medieval Collections.'
Apparently they were delighted with the picture - but, there can be NO definitive answer to questions of this nature. Rather like solving the reason regarding the smile on the face of the Sphinx, we don't know & would perhaps rather not know.
However, my real pleasure came from his final point, would I give permission for the museum to make use of the picture - of course!!
I'm in a bit of a mess in setting up the actual photo on this web page so have provided another one to click on.
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