A letter from the bench
The Den Board Co. · about four minutes
Personalised heirloom backgammon
For the man who got everything else right.
Crocodile-embossed leather over a pale oak field. His initials, or the family name, pressed in gold foil. Made to order, for him and no one else.
14 of 50 bench places left in Batch № 03
Gold monogram
Included, not an upsell
Free U.S. delivery
Tracked, 2–4 weeks
4.9 from 349
Verified owner reviews
No one remembers the whisky.
Everyone remembers who won.
The list
You know the drill by now.
His birthday is three weeks out and you’re looking at the same six ideas you looked at last year. Whisky. A tie. Something with a screen in it that he’ll charge twice and then put in the drawer with the others.
He isn’t difficult to buy for. That’s the story everyone tells because it lets us all off the hook. The actual problem is that almost nothing sold to men now is built to still be in the house in ten years, and he can tell.
Where it started
It started in a den.
Ours was our grandfather’s den. Wood panelling, one lamp, a drinks tray nobody was allowed to touch, and a backgammon board that lived on the table like it paid rent.
He never once offered a game. You asked, or you sat and watched.
Years later we went looking for a board like that one and found the market had split clean in two. Forty-dollar sets, printed card and plastic checkers. Paris ateliers quoting four figures and a wait until spring. Nothing in the middle that a family could put a drink down next to.
So we made one. Then we made it again, properly.
Backgammon is five thousand years old — played in the courts of Ur, carried along trade routes, perfected in the smoking rooms of London. Never played? He’ll teach you. That’s half the gift. Or start here: the rules, in ten minutes, doubling cube included →
So we built it
The Heirloom Board
Crocodile-embossed leather case, hand-finished
Pale oak playing field with inlaid leather points
Ebony and solid-brass checkers, bone dice
Matching leather dice cups, suede-lined
Initials or family name pressed in gold foil — included
Numbered brass plaque: batch and board number
The bench
Two pairs of hands, fifty boards at a time.
Two people, one room, no line. The leather gets cut and saddle-stitched by hand, the oak field inlaid, the racks lined so the checkers stack quietly instead of clattering about in there.
Then the press. Brass type, gold foil, one pull. There is no second attempt — foil only takes once, which is why we press a scrap first and why you see a proof before we go anywhere near the lid.
Fifty to a batch isn’t a marketing number. It’s how many the bench gets through before the leather order turns over. There is one queue and we know where yours sits in it.
The initials
Gold foil. Only his.
His characters go into the stitched plate on the lid the old way: brass type, gold foil, struck under pressure. It is the same method that put names on steamer trunks back when luggage was worth naming, and it is slower than every alternative.
It’s a small thing. You catch it when the light moves and he reaches across for the dice — and in our experience people notice it properly on about the fourth evening, not the first.
Batch № 03 · 14 bench places remain
The price
Let’s talk about the $249.
Here is the arithmetic, since nobody selling you a page like this one usually shows it.
The toy-shop set
$40
Printed card, plastic checkers, a hinge that fails by the second Christmas. Played twice, then the loft.
The Paris atelier
€2,000+
Beautiful, and serious, and priced so that it ends up in a cabinet. Nobody actually plays on a two-thousand-euro board.
The Heirloom Board
$249
Full leather, oak, brass, bone. His name in gold. A tenth the price of the ateliers, and none of the apology.
Personalisation, the proof, the dice cups, the primer and tracked U.S. delivery are all inside the $249. There is no configurator that quietly doubles it at checkout — and until 31 August it stands against $329.
The wait
Made to order means it does not exist yet.
There is no shelf with his board on it. Nothing gets cut until his initials arrive, and then the field is laid, the case stitched, the plate pressed and the plaque numbered, in that order, by the same two people every time.
We could hold stock and ship the same afternoon. We’d sell more. But what you’d be buying is a finished board with a monogram added afterwards, and that is a different object.
Two to four weeks, order to doorstep.
Cutting it fine?
Say so in the order notes and we’ll send you a printed card to hand over on the night, so there’s something to open while his board is still at the bench. Several people have told us the card went down better than the box would have.
no board has ever gone under the press before the proof came back. not once, not even the rushed ones.
The practical part
Where it will actually live.
Open, it’s tournament size: about 21 by 17 inches. It will take the coffee table. That’s deliberate.
Closed, roughly 17 by 10½ by 3 and a shade under six pounds — call it a slim briefcase. Checkers stay in their lined racks, dice go back in the cups, and you can carry it round to someone else’s house without it rearranging itself across the back seat on the way.
Mostly it’s heavy enough that nobody bothers putting it away. Which was the point.
ours lives on the kitchen table. there is a mug ring on the near corner that has been there two years. we have decided it is character.
Each playing field borrows a little oak, so ten oaks go into the ground for every board that leaves the bench. The wood we take, we return with interest.
his grandchildren can check our arithmetic.
The board, in use
From the dens.
4.9 out of 5
From 349 product ratings
★★★★★
“Packaging was lovely. Opened it as soon as it arrived”
Morgan T.
2 August 2026 · Racing Green · Family name
★★★★★
“Sunday game outside”
Claire H.
28 July 2026 · Havana
★★★★★
“Got it for my husband. We played that night lol”
Daniel R.
19 July 2026 · Havana · Initials
What comes with the name
The board is the membership.
There is no fee and no form. When a numbered board leaves the bench with his initials on the lid, he is in — and The Den Club has exactly as many members as there are boards. His number goes in the registry beside every other one we have made.
The registry
Batch and board number, entered by hand. If it ever needs a repair in thirty years, we will know exactly which board it is.
The sealed card
A wax-sealed card in the box, with the house rules on the back. Rule one: the dice are never blamed.
The Den Primer
The printed rules, the doubling cube explained, and enough opening theory to be dangerous by the second game.
His name, on something worthy
of carrying it.
The den standard
The part where we take the risk instead of you.
Before pressing, we email a production proof for your approval. Every board then passes a final bench inspection. If it arrives damaged, faulty, or different from the proof you approved, we replace or refund it at our cost — one email, no forms, no fine print.
The part we won’t dress up: once his characters are struck into the leather, the board can’t come back over a change of mind. Nobody else on earth can use it. That’s why we make you sign the proof off first, and why a person reads every email before the press comes down rather than after.
We mean this. — The Biddle family
From our family to yours
We grew up losing at a board like this one.
Now we make fifty at a time and press every name twice.
If yours ever ends up in a cupboard, we failed.
— The Biddle family
Continuing the company Julian Biddle founded
Before you ask
The five things people write in about.
How big is it, really?
Tournament standard. Open, roughly 21 by 17 inches — it wants a coffee table to itself. Closed, about 17 by 10½ by 3 inches and close to six pounds: the footprint of a slim briefcase, and the checkers stay in their racks when you carry it.
What if I get his initials wrong?
You see them before we press. A proof goes to your inbox and nothing goes under the brass until you reply. Don't know the middle initial yet? Reserve the board anyway and send the characters whenever you've worked it out — your place in the batch is held.
He has never played. Is this wasted on him?
Other way round, in our experience. The printed Den Primer is in the box, the rules take about ten minutes, and whoever is in the room becomes the first person he teaches. Most owners tell us the teaching was the bit they remember.
Can I return it?
Damaged, faulty, or different from the proof you signed off — we replace or refund at our cost. One email, no forms. A personalised board can't come back over a change of mind, though, because nobody else can use it. Hence the proof.
Why only fifty?
One person presses every monogram by hand, and fifty is what the bench gets through before the leather order turns over. That's the whole reason. When a batch closes the next one opens, and those boards ship later.
Still unsure? Write to us — a person answers, usually the same day.
Batch № 03
14 bench places remain.
Across both colourways in Batch № 03. The next board will be numbered for one family.
Batch № 03 · 14 bench places remain
P.S. He’ll say you shouldn’t have.
He won’t mean it.
— The Biddle family
$249
14 places left