** My Date With The Robin Hood**

Few weeks ago I went to see Nottingham castle, than my manager find out about it, joking he asked me if I had a date with a Robin Hood? Well I didn’t, but I saw his statue from the distance that was all wrapped up in golden paper-that made him shine. I don't think it suited his stereotype of robbing gold from rich and give it to a poor while looking at his statue all wrapped up in gold it made me feel, that he actually kept all the gold.lol. Anyway it’s enough about Robin let’s go back to exhibition

Nottingham castle, c.1500 (model by P Dixon and D Taylor).

P.S. I haven't put original pictures, as i have difficulties of uploading it into my PC. Apologies.

Nottingham Castle is a 17th Century Ducal mansion built on the site of the original Medieval Castle.

Have to say that apart from spectacular views across the city from the top of the hill I haven’t enjoyed my trip at all. As most of the castles it hosts a museum and gallery and housing collections of various daily usage things. It’s all interesting to see, but I think the poor layout of the museum destroys the feel between the viewer and exhibition. There is no flow of the time line either and a contrast between rooms is to strong. As in one room you can see little spoons and jewelery and you all happy and admiring things than the next room brings you to war and suddenly you have to forget about the beautiful necklace you saw just a min ago and still admiring it into your head and concentrate on war theme. Or like one of the picture galleries you can see all those great paintings and works of great artists and than just in the middle of the galleries room is a set up of 3-4 year old kids drawing that was displayed messy and didn’t have any function in national museum of the history.

So I didn’t even try to go to see the ceramic room as i was scared to see the elephant poising near the big 13th century ceramic pot or something like that. lol. Fortunately I saw one thing that interest me, it was at the beginning of the exhibition, while I still had interest in it.

This magnificent ivory chest set is made from Indian elephant tusk-I hate this idea about killing animal because of art (money), but trying to ignore this fact it is a beautiful and attractive peace of art with it's subtitle details and various patterns."The words for chess in Old Persian and Arabic are chatrang and shatranj respectively — terms derived from chaturanga in Sanskrit, which literally means an army of four divisions ." more info HERE. Apparently this chess set was carved in china in the early 19^th century made specially for sales purpose, that was Europeans. Very expensive and high quality. It was purchased by museum in 1933 from and cost £65 that was a lot of money those days.

The chessman are supported on ball stems.Each ball contains a series of other balls.of ever decreasing size,each enclosed by another.

I do believe it would be possible to develop some ideas to adapt the idea of chess set in animation. It might even be a good exercise try to model one of the chess figure. Good luck with that. lol