CHESS & ART

The Beauty of Chess

Chess pieces are small works of art. They have accompanied people since the beginning of the game of chess. The dominance of the Staunton chess pieces, which gradually became mandatory since FIDE was founded in 1924, has unfortunately pushed the artistic beauty and diversity of the game of chess to the edge of perception. Reason enough to take a closer look … The page is a bit long, but hopefully it's worth scrolling through. And by the way: Staunton pieces from the 19th century are absolutely wonderful, that is undisputed.

Chess Pieces Poster Series Soon Available

You can now pre-order the poster series shown above. The series, which includes six posters, shows selected chess pieces, sorted by the types of pieces: pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen and king. Size is DIN A2 (420 x 594 mm). Language is German.

217 photos of almost exclusively antique chess pieces illustrate the variety that has characterised the game of chess for centuries. Completely arbitrarily compiled, purely according to the criterion of the subjective perception of beauty.

Shipping within Europe should be straightforward. As far as customs clearance for the rest of the world is concerned, I first need to find out how much work is involved – please understand. Shipping begins in January 2025.

It is a limited edition of 64 pieces. The price is 64 euros plus shipping costs. The six posters are numbered 1/64 to 64/64. You can now reserve your series at office@finestudios.at

Biedermeier

Austria, 19th century. The Austrian chess pieces of the Biedermeier period are mostly filigree pieces turned from wood, with interesting hat shapes on the heads of the bishops. We call the set pictured here the “swimming cap” set for obvious reasons. The structure with nests for the king and queen is still reminiscent of the Selenus shape of the Baroque era.

Unique Hungarien Chess Set

Hungary, 19th century. Unique chess game, extensively restored by **Helfried Puhr**.

Directoire

France, 18th century. From the beginning of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century, chess pieces were made that did not use carved knights, but only turned ones. One can assume that production was cheaper this way. The term “Directoire” has become established for this type of pieces.

Régence

France, 19th century. The so-called “Régence” are among the most popular types of chess pieces of the 19th century. The Régence pieces were still very popular in the 20th century, even though they were no longer permitted for official gaming. The first chess set shown in this series probably dates back to the 18th century.

Typical Régence knights. **Lina Altrichter** describes the eyes of the knights pictured left and in the middle as “hieroglyphic eyes”. The embroidery pictured below comes from Lina's workshop and is based on a model from the 19th century.

Rowbothum Style

In 1512, the chess textbook “Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de le partite” by the Portuguese chess author **Damiano de Odemira** was published in Rome. The first English translation appeared in 1562 and was written by the Englishman **James Rowbothum**. In his book “The Plesaunt and Wittie Playe of the Cheasts renewed” you will not only find the translated work of Damiano, but also an interesting description of the appearance of English chess pieces of Rowbothum’s time. The well-known collector **Dermot Rochford** has compiled his knowledge about this in an article worth reading. Incidentally, **Donald M. Liddell** already mentioned James Rowbothum in his book “Chessmen” in 1937: “We quote at some length since Rowbothum describes the appearance of the men used in the late sixteenth century in England (…).” (Chessmen, page 9)

Not only the beveled knights, but also the rooks are very special in old English chess sets …

Thanks to **Helfried Puhr**’s help the Rowbothum family has grown …

Russian Chess Set by Artel Kultsport

Russian chess set, possibly made in the 1930s by Artel Kultsport in Moscow. **Chuck Grau**’s website is an oasis of knowledge about Russian and Soviet chess sets.

Calvert

English chess pieces from the 19th century are characterised by very high craftsmanship and the use of the highest quality materials. The set shown may have come from John Calvert's workshop and uses boxwood and rosewood as material.* The bear on the chess case – also from the 19th century – sends greetings from Switzerland …

Rustic Antique French Chess Set

France, 18th century or earlier. Please note the turned (not carved) knights and the bishops with triangular hats.*

Mordovian Temnikov Factory No.5

Helfried’s Finding

Austria, 19th century. Large Biedermeier chess set. The Austrian wood turner **Helfried Puhr** discovered that kings, queens and bishops have faces when viewed from the side. From our point of view, a sensational discovery!

Lyon

Chess piece study, pen-and-ink drawing by **Lina Altrichter**

France, 19th century or earlier. Chess set of the so-called “Lyon” type. Looks like it's made from milk chocolate and marzipan …*

Belarusian Mushroom

Heavily weighted Soviet “Mushroom” chess pieces from Belarus. Maybe from the 1930s …

Early English Playing Z

Unusual early English playing set with cleft knights and spiked kings and rooks, 18th century.*

Phrygien (really?)

“Phrygien” (French Helmet) chess set from France, 18th century. What's with this strange name? The renowned collector **Joost van Reeij** can help … Personally, we are of the opinion that the Phrygian headgear has a completely different shape than the headgear worn by the knights in this chess game.

The “French Helmet” knight (left) compared with two celebrities, both of whom wear real Phrygian headgear: Middle: Smurf. Right: Voltaire. The knight's helmet looks sharp like a sickle. The Phrygian hoods hang limply like nice cloth sacks … The “Petit Larousse” writes in its 1910 edition: “Bonnet phrygien, bonnet rouge, semblable à celui que portaient les ancien Phrygiens, et qui fut adopté en France, sous la première République, comme insigne de la liberté.” (“Phrygian cap, red cap, similar to that worn by the ancient Phrygians, and which was adopted in France, under the first Republic, as a badge of freedom.”)

Tsarist or Soviet? Soviet!

A Soviet chess set from the Poltova Sports and Culture Artel of the 1930s. Thanks to **Chuck Grau** for this information! In this photograph from 1939, these chess pieces are quite clearly recognizable.

Zuckerdosendeckel

Austria, second half of the 19th century. It looks as if in Austria, with the advent of the very playable Staunton pieces, the shape of the chess pieces was fundamentally rethought and they were also made more stable. We affectionately call the hat on the bishop’s heads the “sugar bowl lid.” In her casual Viennese style, **Sonnja Altrichter** calls these types of rooks “ashtray rooks.”

At the end of the 19th century, game collections were considered good form in middle-class households. The educated middle class attached great importance to them, especially to chess. The picture above shows a tray that is part of a game box.

Art Déco

GDR

Simple and effective: chess pieces made of plywood. GDR, 20th century.

Some Biedermeier Chess Sets

Biedermeier playing sets, Austria, 19th century. Last one a small and early set on a tavern board from the 19th century.

Toy Sets

In the 19th century, toy pattern books appeared in Germany, in which, among other things, chess pieces were depicted. These sets – often with painted faces – are casually called “toy sets”.

Dutch

Wood with bone finials. The rare Dutch chess sets from the 18th century are of particular elegance.*

Very Early

Early antique European chess set, early 18th century or earlier.*

Old English

“According to my information and designs …”

In the summer of 1934, the chess world first officially learned of the existence of a new type of chess piece. Whether the managing director of the “Großdeutschen Schachbundes” - Ehrhardt Post - was the inventor of the "Deutsche Bundesform (German Federal Form)" remains to be seen (he claimed the chess pieces were created “According to my information and designs …”. After all, he wrote the text shown above "on behalf of" the federal leader Otto Zander. What is more interesting, however, is the fact that there seems to be a predecessor to the “Deutsche Bundesform”. At least this is the view of the renowned Viennese chess historian **Michael Ehn** regarding the chess set shown below.

The chess pieces on the left are obviously a previous version. The knights are a little more playful, the rooks have battlements. The comparison pieces on the right probably belong to a set from the 1940s.

From an artistic perspective, the first decades of the 20th century were also a time of simplification. Since 1910 (Kandinsky) there has been conscious abstraction and stylization. Movements such as Art Déco and Constructivism, Rayonism, Orphism, Cubism and Futurism were almost commonplace. It would therefore be easy to dismiss the “Deutsche Bundesform” as a Nazi work. If you look at the beauty of the stylization and then use high-quality materials such as horn, then you are suddenly faced with elegant Art Déco chess pieces.

Iconic Hungarian Chess Set

In 1974, a series of stamps on the subject of chess was published in Hungary. The very iconical and beautiful chess pieces adorn this series …

Exceptionally stylish and noble chess pieces, probably from the 1960s. The white party looks like it's covered in honey, the black pieces are stained black like a piano. One of our absolute favourites!

Tribal Art – Malawi

These chess pieces from Malawi are mystical and expressive, you could also say: rough. It stands to reason that African tribal art influenced the style of Expressionism.

Modern Times

On **sovietchesssets.com** you can find an extremely interesting article about chess pieces in Constructivist-influenced design. The shape of the rooks is reminiscent of the bollards of a harbor. We wouldn't be surprised if the chess pieces were designed in a maritime setting.

Café Laudon

Two Tribes

The theme of this chess set is: Tribal War! Here the Bontoc warriors compete against the Ifugao fighters. The white pawns look particularly dangerous because they carry the heads of their enemies in their hands as trophies. Philippine carved ebony and hardwood tribal chess set, mid-20th century. A point is all that you can score ….

German Horn

A particularly nice chess set is the horn set, shown here on a German chessboard from 1905.

Dutch or German 19th Century Playing Set

Netherlands or Germany. In contrast to many other bone chess sets from the 19th century, these attractively decorated chess pieces are stable.

Mysterious Moro

Moro chess pieces are really mysterious in their appearance. **Holger Langer** not only runs a collection of antique chess pieces, which he also helpfully presents to the public, he also specialices in Philippine chess pieces. No wonder that his article about Moro chess pieces couldn't be more detailed …

Augarten Chess

The secret of porcelain production came to Vienna in 1718 with Claudius Innocentius du Paquier. There he received the privilege of producing porcelain from Emperor Charles VI. The Porzellangasse in Vienna's 9th district is still a reminder of this today. In 1744 the manufactory came into imperial possession. With the collapse of the monarchy, the company was re-established in 1923 at a new location: in Vienna's Augarten. At the same time, the company was known as the “Porzellanmanufaktur Augarten”.

Chess collector Alex Hammond wrote in “The Book Of Chessmen” in 1950: “The Imperial Viennese porcelain factory made chessmen in ceramic in the eighteenth century. This practice was discontinued for many years, only reviving again about twenty-four years ago, when a fair number of beautiful pieces in classic style were made, some in black and white but others decorated and gilt.”

Alex Hammond, “The Book of Chessmen” (1950), page 52

When asked about this, the art historian Claudia Lehner-Jobst from the Augarten Porcelain Manufactory contacted me. Claudia Lehner-Jobst: “As far as I know, the imperial factory did not produce any chess sets in the 18th or 19th centuries, although games of all kinds were an important part of court life and there are some very nice tins with playing chips from the Baroque period.” A chess set was added to the product range as early as 1924. (see photos). The playful Art Déco design comes from the artist Mathilde Jaksch, who created numerous, some very popular, designs for Augarten. Very little is known about Mathilde Jaksch; she was born in 1899 and received artistic training in Vienna and Gmunden. At this point we would like to thank Claudia Lehner-Jobst for her help.
Hammond continues in the book: “Those people who secured a set of these very pretty and entirely playable pieces before the Second World War may consider themselves fortunate—for the factory, together with all its moulds, was destroyed during the War. An inquiry made on behalf of the author recently was answered by the statement that the whole of the moulds had been destroyed by bombing and nothing further in this line could be supplied.” The chess set can still be bought at Augarten today, so it is obvious that after the moulds were lost, they had to have been remade. Our inquiry as to whether the post-war pieces were modeled after the original chess pieces or whether only a mould was made from existing pieces has not yet been answered. This is interesting because the post-war chess pieces in the latter case would have to be significantly smaller than the chess pieces from 1924 due to the shrinkage during firing (about 20%!).

Addendum

We have now found in Donald M. Liddell's "Chessmen" from 1937 both a funny remark about the Augarten chess pieces from 1924 and an important reference to the chess pieces made by the Imperial Viennese porcelain factory in the 18th century mentioned by Hammond.
The funny comment: “The Viennese Imperial China Factory was revived in 1926, and has turned out some typical little Viennese figures, very beautiful, though we may question whether a bathing-beauty Bishop has any place on a battlefield.” (Chessmen, page 68)
The important note: “The Alt Wien works imitated the Meissen chessmen, making them a little smaller than the originals, using the beehive potter’s marks. (ibid)
It seems that in the 18th century the Viennese Imperial Factory only moulded the chess pieces produced by Meissen, so that – after the firing – shrunken versions of the Meissen figures emerged. In this case, these chessmen would be pirated copies. It would be interesting to know whether there are any chess collectors among the readers of these lines who have such chess pieces (in the shape of the Meissen figures but with the beehive of the Austrian Porcelain Manufactory) in their possession. We would be pleased to hear from you.

St. George Chessmen

Nicholas Lanier (1954–2019) noted on his website: “The St. George chess pieces got their name from the St. George Club, founded in 1843 on the street of the same name in central London, which chose these chessmen as part of the club set. (…) As a result, St. George sets were made not only by the leading manufacturer Jaques, but also by other chess piece turners, such as Lund, Fisher, Hastilow, Calvert, Ayres, etc., sometimes in unusual and opulent versions in ivory and mixed materials. St. George sets were also made in very cheap variations for the toy market – also by Jaques. Interestingly, St. George sets were also produced in Germany from the middle of the 19th century … .”

The toy versions mentioned by Nicholas Lanier (the king's height here is just about 47 mm) had turned slope cut knights …

… while the German-made chess pieces had nice ornaments.

Bauhaus Chess

At the latest with Josef Hartwig in 1923, strict geometry found its way into the game of chess. Hartwig was a master craftsman of wood and stone sculpture at the Bauhaus in Weimar. You don't have to think it's nice, but it's reasonably consistent (although there are enough arguments that only the rook and bishop are consistently shaped).

Upright Styrians

Here we are pleased to present a chess set that was made this year (2024) by the Styrian amateur wood turner Helfried Puhr. Helfried's intention was to create a model based on the famous Lasker-Schlechter chess set from the beginning of the 20th century.

In February 2024, Helfried wrote: "There is a technical problem in the production of the crowns of the king and queen (…). In my opinion, the original ends were made on a Passig lathe. Passig lathes were machines whose spindles regularly moved back and forth during rotation, towards and away from a fixed tool. The cutting edge of the tool was shaped accordingly, as a "shaping iron". As I cannot make the spindle on my lathe "wobble", I am trying to use a device that brings a self-made shaping iron in a suitable shape to the rotating workpiece at intervals.

I know that replicas of the Lasker-Schlechter chess pieces also come with milled ends on kings and queens, but I'm stubborn, either original or nothing.”

Ultimately, Helfried managed to modify his machine accordingly. The chip removal was much lower than 5/100 mm per revolution. He also had to convert his machine to manual operation. Long working days were the order of the day...