Chaturaji set

Normally, a chess board is a horizontal surface on which the pieces stand, right? But there is no reason why a chess board can't be vertical! With that in mind, I created a 'board' consisting of a square of chicken wire fence, criss-crossed by yellow and brown wool threads. The playing 'squares' are where threads of the same colour cross, and the pieces were to be 'hanging' from the board rather then standing on it.

I decided to create this vertical set for Chaturaji, an old Indian chess variant, played by four people. For the pieces I made models of insects and other arthropods from metal rings, screws, nails and hooks, in various sizes. Idea was that they would be 'crawling' over the hanging 'web' on the board.

Pawns were ants, rooks were grasshoppers, knights were butterflies, elephants were beetles, and the king was a scorpion (Chaturaji had neither a queen, nor a ferz, its predecessor). Painted in yellow, beige, light and dark brown, each piece had a little hook at the back to hang it from the chicken wire.

The story of the fate of this set is probably familiar to anyone who has followed my blog: no idea when and where I lost it. I'm not too sad about that one not surviving; it was a fun one to design, think through, and build, but certainly not the best set I ever made.