Commissioned sea shells set

A few months ago, I wrote about getting my first commission: creating a sea shells set for a friend. I am pleased to announce that that set is now finished, and handed over to the rightful owner.

When designing the set, one thing was clear in my mind: I did not want it to be a copy of the first sea shells set I made many years ago. Of course, using some of the same shells was unavoidable, but I wanted to make sure it looked quite different.

For the board, I decided on white and red squares, with quite wide black edges. Extra ornamentation in those edges comes from four cockle shells at the corners of the board.

                                                                     

Shells for all the pieces are mounted on wooden discs, using some clay where necessary. Pieces are painted silver and gold, as I felt that would set them off nicely on the red and white squares of the board.

So which shells are for which pieces? Slipper shells are used as the pawns:












The rooks are made of cockles:

Knights appear in the shape of whelks:

The bishops consist of two pairs of mussels each:

Piddocks, also known as 'Angel Wings', make up the queens:

And, finally, the kings are made from razor shells:












I do think the full set looks pretty good!

Even though many of the shells used are the same in this and my earlier sea shells set (cockles, mussels, whelks and razor shells feature in both), the whole looks quite different, which is exactly what I intended.

I think it's safe to say that my friend was very pleased with the set! And his son couldn't wait playing a game with it.

Guys, enjoy it!