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!