Chess board with owls in black and white porcelain

When an organisation named "Uilenspel" (owls' play / owls' game) from Ghent, Belgium asked me to make something which could be auctioned at a art fair to support their work, I had a chess set in my mind straight away, the pieces in the shape of owls. 

Here it is, I worked on it over many weeks, but if you add up all the hours it's about weeks worth of work, I guess. It was a joy to make. The board is porcelain too, on a wooden base with an oak frame. 

Each piece is different and each is made by hand, I used no moulds at all.

see the little mouse hiding under the kings cloak, and an elf on the tree stump of the queen

A bishop is not the same in Dutch, there it's called a runner /walker as a messenger would, hence the owls on stilts, so it can take big steps.

I loved adding all the quirky details, an elf here, a leprechaun there, there's several mice and a bird. 
If you want to see more pictures, head over to my flickr page.
If you want to know more about the auction and the organisation, I added that info to the blogpost about the story bowl made for the same auction.

Story Bowl: Owls' Play

A story bowl for an organisation named "Uilenspel" (owls' play) from Ghent, Belgium. This is a group of mostly volunteers who help primary school kids, especially foreign childern, with their homework. They come to the childs house and thus not only help the child, but are of help to the parents too, with understanding the Belgian (school) system and so on. The organisation pairs volunteers with kids if possible from the same neighbourhood. The volunteers learn more about a different culture at the same time.

Nearly dry enough to fire, the owls are still a bit wet though. Once fired it's much whiter:

The bowl shows the volunteer and the child, the big and the small owl. To show they learn from each other they are at the same level. The mice just popped into the bowl as I was working on it, I guess they stand for the people close to the owls, benefiting from the owls interaction.

Of course the bowl is presented in an exclusive Two Trees fair-trade gift box.

The bowl will be auctioned on November the 30th 2013 in Ghent, read more about that here (in Dutch).

KADO KADO 2013

Coming days I'm preparing to sell at KADO KADO, the 3th edition. More info on the facebook page.

Hope to see you there, or at 1 of the other events were I'll be.