Collection
Leather Backgammon
2 objects
No box — the leather is the board.
Full-grain leather, sourced in Italy and cut and finished in Colombia, carrying the twenty-four points of the board. The leather is not a covering for a board — it is the board.
About the collection
There is no box here: the leather is the board. Full-grain bovine hide, sourced in Italy and stitched by hand in Colombia, opens flat and plays the same game as any wooden set.
It wears like leather does, darkening where hands rest, and it carries like a bag — under the arm, or on the strap across the body.
Good to know
- What leather is it?
- Full-grain bovine, sourced in Italy and cut and stitched by hand in Colombia. The hide is the board, so nothing about it is hidden behind a box.
- Will it change with use?
- It wears like leather does — darkening where hands rest, softening where it folds. That is the point of making a board you can carry.
- Does it come with a case?
- It comes with itself: folded, the board is the bag, and a cotton dust bag protects it between games.
There is no box here, no plate, and no folding board inside a case. The playing surface is the inside face of the leather, which is why this is one object rather than two. Full grain means the top of the hide is left on. The surface keeps the marks the animal made, and it takes on the marks of being used: a set that lives on a table looks better in five years than it does in the first week. The leather is sourced in Italy. The cutting, the printing of the points and the finishing happen in Colombia, by the workshop that makes the bag. Both colourways are $600 — Nero, open for pre-order, and Rosso, sold out. Inside, the set is complete: thirty checkers, fifteen to a side in cream and black, four dice and a doubling cube. The board holds twenty-four points either side of the bar, and each player runs their fifteen checkers round it to bear them off at home.
Nothing here is a laminate. The points are printed on the leather itself, and the surface a checker slides on is the same hide the bag was cut from. Choose between the two colourways by the leather, not the specification: nothing else about them differs. The collection is opened by a game of backgammon against the house. One round decides it: win and the shop is yours to browse, lose and you are welcome back tomorrow.