Car part set

The first set entirely created after I moved to the UK was made from various car parts: spark plugs for the rooks, pieces of tyre for the knights, light bulbs for the bishops, the emblems from our old Opel, who had given up the ghost just before moving to the UK, as queens, and the keys to that Opel as the kings (the key to the game, obviously!). Main pieces all mounted on nuts and painted copper or silver. The pawns were sealed sample vials filled with either cooling fluid (for the white/silver side) or engine oil (for the black/copper side).

The board consisted of Perspex, with the squares separated by pieces of electrical wiring, stretched across the board.

As with several of the previous older chess sets, this set got lost somewhere along the way. All I have to prove it existed is these two pictures, taken with the set sitting on top of the engine of our old trusted Volvo Estate (which has also long ago given up the ghost).

In case you're wondering why the board isn't chequered, and why there is an empty row between the pawns and the major pieces, the board and pieces are set up for Makruk, Thai chess.

Looking back at the set now, I don't think it was my best one. There are some nice ideas (I still like the two sets of pawns having two differently-coloured liquids), but overall it's pretty rough.

First commission!

Following me posting the pictures of my sea shells chess set on Facebook, I was approached by a friend of mine. He was keen to teach his young son to play chess, and really liked my old sea shells set. Would I be willing to make something along the same lines for him and his son?

I was quite pleased with my original sea shells set, so wouldn't mind creating another one. But I don't want to just copy the first one; the second one ought to be quite different, in terms of design of the pieces as well as colours and general design of the board.

But first thing first: collect sea shells! Over the xmas holidays, we went beach-combing several times in order to collect a wide variety of shells (for this set, I only want molluscs). I didn't have clear ideas yet as to what the pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, queens and kings should look like; that would be determined completely by what we could find. To give us the greatest variety of shells to work with, we collected both from shingle and sand beaches near where we live along the south coast.

Couple of hours collecting usually resulted in several containers full!

Not surprisingly given their biology, shells from shingle beaches were mostly gastropods, whereas bivalves were much more common when collecting on sandy beaches.

Methinks, I've got enough to make a set!

As I'm writing this, my ideas as to what shells to use for which piece are starting to take shape. I've not given a time frame to the 'customer'; the set will be ready when it's ready. But you can be sure it will feature in a blog post once it's done; watch this space!

Byzantine chess set

The next set I made started out as a small set on a square 8 x 8 board. The pieces were made from small Dutch 10 cent coins ('dubbeltjes'); the 'white' pieces were not painted, but the 'black' pieces were painted metallic green. The board was made from squares cut from dollar bills.

After moving to the UK, when I became more and more aware of the large number of historical chess variants, I decided to change the board to one used for Byzantine Chess, a circular medieval Persian variant. A circular chess board was carved into, and then painted on, a tree stump, using silver and metallic green paint.

Like several of the older chess sets I made, this set also got lost somewhere along the way, and the two pictures above are the only evidence of it. At least, I think it did ... I'm absolutely sure I didn't take the tree stump with me in every subsequent house move, but I'm not ruling out that the pieces, small as they are, are still hiding in a little box on the attic somewhere. It was a neat little set; the two boards were rather amateurish, but the pieces themselves were fun to create. Should I indeed still have the pieces somewhere, I'll make sure to create a new board for them. Or, if the pieces are truly lost, I may well create another set from small coins in the future.