![]() ![]() The king sizes ranged from 3½ to 4½ inches and the sets typically came in a papier-mâché case, each one bearing a facsimile of Staunton's signature under the lid. Some ivory sets were made from African ivory. The ebony and boxwood sets were weighted with lead to provide added stability and the underside of each piece was covered with felt, allowing the pieces to slide easily across the board. This shows that the Staunton design may have been taken from these diagrams, very likely created by a printer. įrom 1820 on, diagrams in chess books began to use icons of chess pieces similar in many respects to the Staunton chessmen, including a change from arched crown to coronet for the queen. It may have been a combination of both theories with the synergy of Cooke the entrepreneur and Jaques the artisan. In the end, he most likely borrowed and synthesized elements from sets already available to create a new design that used universally recognizable symbols atop conventional stems and bases: The resulting pieces were compact, well balanced, and weighted to provide an understandable, practical playing set. Īnother possibility is that Jaques, a master turner, had probably been experimenting with a design that not only would be accepted by players but also could be produced at a reasonable cost. This was because, in descriptive chess notation, the rooks and knights were often designated by being the "queen's knight", the "king's rook", etc. There were also practical innovations: A crown emblem was stamped onto a rook and knight of each side to identify their positioning on to the king's side of the board.
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