Mycology Meets the Chessmen

Abstract

Increasingly recognized as agents of attacks on various types of specimens stored in museums around the world, fungi now seem likely to have been responsible for the degradation of some extraordinary medieval sculptures in Scotland. These are the Lewis Chessmen, made mostly from walrus ivory and some from whales' teeth. They are generally thought to have been discovered in Uig, on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis in 1831 (although an inland site on the island has also been claimed). Studies by James Tate at the National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, together with researchers at the University of Dundee and the Istituto Centrale per il Restaurio e la Conservazione del Patrimonio Archivistico e Librario in Rome, Italy, now point to fungi as causes of the strange but very characteristic damage seen on the chess pieces.