It's endlessly fascinating how culture, religion and even language influence stylistic choices, even though Chess is a purely abstract game.
The obvious ones: in Western sets the king has a cross on top, and Islamic traditions only use abstract shapes. But I wonder if the "usual" designs aren't at least somewhat influenced by the English language specifically. Bishops have a stylized miter and Rooks are a tower with crenellations, but e.g. in Russian Bishop is "elephant" and Rook is "boat". Even in many other Western European languages "Bishop" as in the piece is not the same as bishop as in the religious office, e.g. "fou" in French, "alfil" in Spanish, "Laufer" in German.
It took a while to find one, but the "Hermès Chess Set" has the board the wrong way round, with the white square bottom left. I like to call this "hollywood configuration" because of how often this happens in film & tv.
Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.
I definitely struggle at playing using artistic pieces. I had one set when I was a kid: it was so much more difficult to recognize patterns with its metal pieces: sometimes I even couldn't distinguish black from white.
But they were pretty as hell, and I absolutely loved it.
It's endlessly fascinating how culture, religion and even language influence stylistic choices, even though Chess is a purely abstract game.
The obvious ones: in Western sets the king has a cross on top, and Islamic traditions only use abstract shapes. But I wonder if the "usual" designs aren't at least somewhat influenced by the English language specifically. Bishops have a stylized miter and Rooks are a tower with crenellations, but e.g. in Russian Bishop is "elephant" and Rook is "boat". Even in many other Western European languages "Bishop" as in the piece is not the same as bishop as in the religious office, e.g. "fou" in French, "alfil" in Spanish, "Laufer" in German.
It took a while to find one, but the "Hermès Chess Set" has the board the wrong way round, with the white square bottom left. I like to call this "hollywood configuration" because of how often this happens in film & tv.
I would very strongly recommend the Gökyay Chess Museum in Ankara, Turkey, if anyone is ever there.
https://www.gokyaysatrancvakfi.org.tr/en/chess-museum/
Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.
For me, it’s either Staunton or St George.
Every thing else is very pretty but feels a bit weird and off.
You can look at it but you wouldn’t want to play with it.
I definitely struggle at playing using artistic pieces. I had one set when I was a kid: it was so much more difficult to recognize patterns with its metal pieces: sometimes I even couldn't distinguish black from white.
But they were pretty as hell, and I absolutely loved it.