'We work with over 150 species of exotic woods,' adds Brumfield. No, they're hand-tooled from, for example, semi-precious stone (opal and jade) aerospace metal alloys (including - as the site call it - 'insanely expensive' timascus) and animal - or even human - remains: alligator jawbone, walrus baculum, 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth tusks and ' retired skeletons once used in medical universities,' according to the company website. That's fitting, because while the price for a set of dice starts off around $60, the cost can climb up to several thousand of dollars - and the construction can sometimes incorporate incredibly rare materials.īrumfield may make dice for nerds, but they're nerds with a goodly amount of disposable income: 'You can buy a nice used car for the price of some of the sets we sell,' he says.Īrtisan Dice aren't manufactured from injection-molded plastic. When not in use, many of the sets rest within a fancy, rounded, wooden gaming container, which Brumfield refers to as a 'reliquary' - in other words, a holder of precious relics. They are generally sold as a set with 10 dice in all. That means, in addition to six-sided dice - which, as a pair, are the standard accompaniment to most traditional board games - Brumfield crafts dice with four, eight, 10, 12, and 20 sides. 'It's basically grown adults sitting around a coffee table playing mathematically altered make-believe.' 'We make dice for nerds,' says Brumfield bluntly. The common thread is immersive fictional worlds involving fantasy elements like fire-breathing dragons or forest-dwelling elves or extraterrestrial Jedi Knights. Instead, Brumfield caters to people devoted to role-playing games (RPGs) like Pathfinder, World of Darkness, and the one that set off the craze for many players in the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons. We understand that we make a luxury item for a very niche market.'Īlthough the image of a standard pair of dice with dotted surfaces - rather than the numbers being printed out on them - appears on Artisan Dice's website within its logo, the company isn't geared towards folks who, for example, play craps.

It's as expensive as it needs to be to make what we're making. 'We are the Bentley of dice,' says Brumfield.

Artisan dice meteorite