Known for her meaningful and sustainable luxury backgammon boards, Alexandra Llewellyn’s work is made even more compelling by the stories that have shaped her brand.
Alexandra Llewellyn is no stranger to rolling the dice – both physically and metaphorically. When we speak, she’s still riding the high of hosting a women’s poker night the evening before. She apologises for her exhaustion, laughing, “The problem is everyone has such a good time that they don’t leave!” Even so, her energy returns instantly the moment she talks about her work. And how could it not? She’s carved out a career that blends her love of backgammon with her fine-art background – an unexpected pairing that somehow feels completely right.
The designer first discovered backgammon as a child, playing it in Egypt with her step-grandfather and, memorably, in the streets of Cairo with an elderly man. She describes it as “an amazing seminal moment”, a time when she realised the “universality of games”. Though they didn’t speak the same language, they connected across the board – a kind of communication that transcended words. Back home in the English countryside, she continued playing with her family, deepening her affection for the game.
Llewellyn’s love of making is another thread that has always run through her life – and her family’s. Her mother designs clothes, her father is a landscape designer and her grandmother was an artist. Creativity wasn’t just something that surrounded her; it felt woven into her very soul. “I used to have this space at home – my mother called it my junk pile, I called it my treasure trove – where I would just collect objects,” she recalls. That instinct to gather, experiment and create led her to study at the University of Leeds, where she earned a degree in fine and studio arts.
In 2010, she founded her eponymous luxury brand, crafting board games, bespoke backgammon and poker sets, unique playing cards and games tables. The idea arose after she’d made several boards for friends and family. She realised it offered an incredible opportunity to push the boat out in terms of design, materials and British craftsmanship – luxury price point included – but she never anticipated she’d be working on bespoke pieces 70% of the time; she thought she’d build an entire lifestyle brand.
This expansion was unexpected, yes, but it didn’t happen quietly. Over the past 15 years, Llewellyn has established herself as a must-commission designer in the world of luxury games. She won Country & Town House’s Great British Brands ‘Hero for Craftsmanship’ award in 2022 and appeared in the Walpole Power List as a ‘Rising Star’ in 2019 and as one of the 50 most influential people in British luxury in 2022. Her work goes far beyond the ordinary; it’s the epitome of artistry, precision and imagination.
“If I sat next to someone at a dinner party and said, ‘Oh, I make backgammon boards and games,’ then of course, what’s in their mind is limited to what they know,” she shares, pausing before continuing. “But in fact, it is so rich, the places that I’m going with all of these projects.” One look at her boards proves the point: they’re not merely games, but objets d’art. And what goes on behind the scenes is what solidifies them as more than something to play with, but something to admire.
She gestures toward the butterfly backgammon board displayed on the flawlessly arranged, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind her and describes the meticulous process of creating a game board from start to finish. For that one in particular, it involved as many as seven different UK-based workshops handling the leatherwork, marquetry, polishing and playing pieces. It’s a deeply collaborative process – one that allows her more creativity in the scope of what she does. It has also fostered remarkable relationships with the artisans she works alongside.
“Often, I’ll speak to a lot of them more than I do my family,” Llewellyn laughs. “The makers I love to work with – we both speak the same language in terms of design and technicalities, but we also have a relationship that we’ve built up over a long time.” With each piece made-to-order and crafted in limited runs, there is a distinct emphasis placed on designing pieces that are consciously and sustainably made, from the people she works with to the materials she chooses.
As part of her practice, Llewellyn also takes on many bespoke commissions, working directly with clients to realise their visions. “I say that each one is a window into another world. Creatively, that’s so exciting,” she explains. These commissions have allowed her to work with a plethora of extraordinary materials: a lump of lunar rock, polished black obsidian and a 30-million-year-old fossilised tree. “I’ve just received the most amazing pair of Roman dice; they’re 2,000 years old,” she says, her face lighting up as she speaks. “Imagine all the games and conversations and everything that has happened over those.” For Llewellyn, objects like these carry a kind of quiet magic – evidence of lives lived, hands held and stories exchanged. That sense of history (and the joy of collecting just as she did as a child) remains one of her favourite parts about her craft.
What’s the one thing Llewellyn considers when designing a bespoke board? “The playability – that’s first and foremost,” she states. “But I suppose it’s beauty. The design has to sing, right? It’s got to exist as an object in its own right.” And that’s exactly what each and every design does. It sings. It tells a story. But most importantly, it lives far beyond the parameters of what we know a ‘game’ to be.
photography. Courtesy of Alexandra Llewellyn
words. Amber Louise
