Sea shells set

The very first chess set I ever made was based on sea shells and other sea creatures. Back then I lived close to the sea, so a few hours searching for sea shells on the Scheveningen beach got me everything I needed. Cockles for the rooks, crab carapaces for the knights (crabs often partly moving sideways matched the move of the knight, I felt), mussels for the bishops, razor shells for the queen and a whelk for the king. Ordinary surf clams for the pawns, and all pieces mounted on draught stones. The 'white' set was painted white, and the 'black' set metallic blue; I felt those colours captured 'the sea'. Board was made from plywood, with the squares painted white and metallic blue.

I was rather pleased with it, to be honest! Sadly, the set is long gone, and all I have left of it are two pictures.

Not ruling out, by the way, that I'll make another chess set from sea shells in the future. It won't be identical to this first one, though!

Chess variants, chess sets, chess creations

Hi there!

Ever since I found out that chess as played under FIDE rules is just one of many many variants, I've been interested in the origin and history of this family of games. This may be partly because I'm an evolutionary biologist; more on that in a future blog post ....

In parallel with this growing interest, I also became interested in designing and making chess sets myself. These creative urges first surfaced something like 30 years ago, when I still lived in the Netherlands. I made a few sets then, and continued to do so for a few years after moving to the UK some years later. Other interests took over for a while, but my chess set creations were rekindled until workload pushed them back yet again. Now that I've gotten my life back workwise, creative juices are slowly starting to flow again. To accompany this 'third wave', I thought I'd create a blog, presenting the sets I made in the past, and taking that to the present.

My intention with this blog is not to offer any of the sets commercially. For me, the fun is in designing and making the pieces and/or the board. Doing the same set twice doesn't have any creative value, at least not to me.

Some of the sets presented in this blog are made entirely myself, some have a board made for existing pieces, and there will also be a few sets in my collection that I got without too much creative input (or none whatsoever!). I'll also throw in some information occasionally on chess variants, and on the origin and early history of the game.

Hope you enjoy!