Louis XIV set

This Louis XIV chess set kept popping up on eBay, and at some point, I just couldn't resist any more. Didn't come with a board, but I felt it would look good on the red wooden board from my Roman set.

Guess the set appealed to me because of the dynamic nature of especially the bishops and knights. Also, it's quite a chunky set, similar in that way to my Royal Beasts set. 

Not much else to say about it, I guess, but I do think it works well on this particular board.

Gwangsanghui

Not much is known about the origin and history of Janggi, or Korean chess. Some characteristics, such as the absence of the river, suggest it may represent an older form of Xiangqi (Chinese chess) rather than 'just' be a xiangqi variant.

Even less is known of Gwangsanghui, a larger Janggi variant other than that it appears to date from the 18th century. I got my information on this larger game here, and the initial layout of the board and pieces appears to be like this:

I was keen to make myself a gwangsanghui set, using glass pebbles for the pieces, and transparent perspex for the board.

Thought long and hard as to how to make the lines, and finally decided on painting them on the underside of the perspex. In order to do that, I first drew the board on a piece of cardboard, put that underneath the perspex ...

... and then started painting the lines, using the template underneath.

Bit of a tricky job, as I had no margin for error: it wouldn't be possible to 'erase' any mistake from the perspex. But all went fine!

I then added four glass pebbles to the board to serve as small 'feet'.

For the pieces, I cut out their symbols, and glued them underneath the glass pebbles.

And this is then what the full set looks like:

Very pleased with it! And the fact that the lines aren't perfectly straight adds something to the board, I think.

There can't be many gwangsanghui sets in the world, I reckon ....

Spear's set

You probably wouldn't think 'vintage' when you see a plastic chess set, but I consider this Spear's set to be close to vintage. Not sure when it was made and sold, but I reckon it's 40-50 years old (someone correct me if I'm wrong!).

The set doesn't come with a board, but I felt the pieces would nicely match the board that came with my pseudo-Italfama set.

The design of the pieces is more interesting than the bog-standard plastic pieces you can get everywhere for almost nothing. So a nice addition to the collection, I think.