Alabaster set

Have you heard of a Japanese art form called 'kintsugi'? If not, it's used in pottery. When a piece of pottery is broken and repaired, rather than try and make the repairs as invisible as possible, they are actually highlighted with gold. I really like the philosophy behind it, giving a piece of pottery a new lease of life, but in a way that shows the piece has had a life already. Sort of being proud of your scars and not ashamed to show them, as they are part of who you are and the life you have had.

Why do I mention kintsugi in a blog post on an alabaster chess set? Well, it all started with a very nice alabaster set, made by C A&A in Italy, listed on eBay, including the marble board. The buy-it-now price was very low, so I jumped on it; pieces and board duly arrived, in two separate boxes

Unfortunately, the seller naively thought that simply putting some 'fragile' tape around a cardboard box would prevent it being kicked about in the postal system. The pieces were fine, as they had some protection inside their own box, but, not being protected by anything like bubble wrap or polystyrene, the marble board arrived in a number of larger and smaller pieces ....

The seller was very apologetic and immediately offered a full refund. In the end, as I was keen to keep the (undamaged) pieces, we agreed on partial refund, just for the board.

But of course, I now had pieces that needed a board .... two options, essentially: find a replacement board, or somehow repair the broken one. Another marble board that matched the pieces in size and colour proved elusive, and then I remembered kintsugi ... how about repairing the board kintsugi-style? If it didn't work out, I still had the option to keep looking for a replacement board.

As I wanted to make sure the glued-together board was supported in some way, I got a square of plywood and spray-painted it gold. I glued the pieces of the board to each other and to the plywood base.

I then used gold paint (rather than actual gold, I have to admit) to highlight the breaks, as well as the places where the lacquer had come off.

Done! It looks pretty good, I think, and the gold paint highlights the cracks and other damage in a very positive way, giving the board a character it didn't have before it broke.

So ... time to put the pieces on the board.

The full set definitely has more character now than ever before; just what kintsugi is all about .... Although I wouldn't necessarily go as far as saying I should break all boards before adding them to the collection, this set surely has a unique place in it.

Matryoshka set

Matryoshka (or babushka) chess sets pop up on eBay regularly, with prices varying widely. I always liked the look of them, and wanted to add one to the collection, so waited until one was listed for a price I was willing to pay.

This particular set was new, and came with a carved red/white wooden board, with the pieces neatly stored inside.

Pieces are nicely made and painted; I think the knights are done with a bit of humour.

I felt it would be fitting to designate this set as one for a historical variant played in Russia until the 19th century. In this particular 'Russian chess', the queen is an 'amazon', a piece which combines the moves of a queen with that of a knight.

Shogi travel set

I'd completely forgotten about this Shogi travel set until I found it in the back of a drawer. Can't remember when or how I got it, but, being a chess set, it deserves a place in the collection.

The board is metal, and the pieces are plastic with a small embedded magnet.

As you'd expect from a travel set, it's pretty small: the board measures 18 x 19 cm.

Skyline set

Skyline chess is a luxury chess set, with the pieces taking the form of iconic buildings in either London, Paris, Dubai, New York or San Francisco (and more cities in the pipeline). The set comes in several editions; the cheapest costs £95, while the 'luxury bronze' edition will set you back just shy of £3000 ...

I did manage to get my hands on a basic London edition, and I can assure you I paid a lot less for it than £95!

The board it comes with is a simple cardboard fold-up board, but I wanted to create a bit more of a classy board for it, without it costing me the £140 price tag of the official Skyline marble board.

So I first got myself a marble-effect ceramic tile, as a sample from a tile company.

Secondly, I ordered two sets of small ceramic tiles, in two colours, 'victorian white' and 'victorian red'.

The small tiles were glued to the large marble tile, such that the playing area is 45 degrees rotated relative to the 'mother board'.

To finish off the board, I wanted to do something with London's coat of arms, given that the set shows the London skyline.

And I found large stickers sporting it on eBay!

So, with the board completed, time to add the pieces.

The pieces are made from plastic, but they are high quality, and weighted as well, which is something you don't see in cheap plastic pieces. That does show the designers of Skyline chess really aim for the higher end of the market.

The pieces include Big Ben, the London Eye, the Gherkin, the Shard and One Canada Square, Canary Wharf. Terraced houses function as pawns. And if you wonder why the Big Ben rooks look so puny, the pieces are done more or less to scale (actually, if they had really been done to scale, Big Ben would be even smaller than it is now).

I feel I've got myself a fitting and unique board for my Skyline set, and at a fraction of the price of the official luxury boards!

Star Wars set

The first sci-fi set in my collection was a Thunderbird set. Being a fan of sci-fi, I did keep my eyes open for other sci-fi-related sets, and one that pops up on eBay quite regularly is a Star Wars set. Actually, there are at least four or five different sets, some nicer than others.

The one I went for is one linked to the original Star Wars trilogy ("A New Hope" - "The Empire Strikes Back" - "Return of the Jedi", now officially designated as episodes IV to VI). Pieces differ between the two sides and include Luke Skywalker (carrying Yoda), Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, C3PO and R2D2, Boba Fett, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. X-Wings and Tie Fighters feature as the pawns.

Setting up the board as depicted on the box, you may notice one odd thing: yes, h1 and a8 are black ...

Leaving that issue as it is (maybe, in a galaxy far, far away, h1/a8 are indeed black), I did make a few changes to the identity of the pieces. I felt Han Solo was better as knight than bishop, and that Yoda, being carried by Luke Skywalker, was better as bishop. So I turned those two around. Similarly, I swapped knight and bishop on the dark side, making the Red Guards bishops and Stormtroopers knights.

The pieces are made of some sort of plastic, and are of good quality, with a decent amount of detail.

Wonder how Darth Vader would feel about being queen in a chess set ...

The set now lives on its own cardboard board, but maybe I'll create a circular board for it one day, resembling the holochess table on the Millennium Falcon.

Vampires & Werewolves set

So far, I've been using a range of different materials for the chess sets and boards I have made myself over the years. But it suddenly dawned on me that there is one 'material' I have never made use of: light.

While thinking about how I could use light to enhance a chess set, I stumbled across a 'vampires & werewolves' set on the www. Prices varied widely, and I managed to get a new set for a reasonable price.

The set on its own is already very nice, with the pieces of the vampire and werewolf armies well made from a type of resin, and with lots of detail.

This set was absolutely perfect for what I had in mind, and, I'll give it away now, it turned out exactly as I had envisioned.

First, I got myself two strings of LED xmas lights, green and red.

Then, I taped the lights under the white squares of the board, half of them green, half red. That left four pairs of lights to be attached to the four 'ruins' carrying the board.

Big moment: will switching on the lights give me what I had in mind?

It most surely did, so time to put the pieces back on the board!

The effect of the lights really creates a spooky atmosphere, green really fitting with vampires, and red with werewolves.

As I said above, I'm really pleased this came out the way I had envisioned it. Because the lights are under the white squares, they appear much more like a glow than single light points, sickly green in the vampire half, aggressive red in the werewolf half. The extra lights on the 'ruins' add to the atmosphere, resembling torches or beacons.

And to give you a better idea of what it looks like in a dark room, here's a brief video:

Of course, the set can be used to play chess according to FIDE rules, but there's a much more appropriate variant: Werewolf chess!

Middle Eastern set

Saw this heavy stone set on eBay, in very good condition. There was no information as to its origins, but I liked the design of the pieces, so I took a punt and won the bidding. After posting the picture on a few chess collectors groups on Facebook, it was suggested that the set might be Middle Eastern in origin. One poster suggested possibly Indian, though that was refuted by another poster.

The set came without a board, and not long after getting it, I got this nice marquetry board. Lots of little pieces of wood!

As before, I posted the picture in a few chess collectors groups, and the suggestion was Syrian or Turkish.

So I had a likely Middle Eastern set, and a board probably from the same general region .... why not put them together?

Even though the board and set do not belong together by design, I do feel they really fit together nicely.

Of course, the set can be used to play FIDE chess. But given it's likely origin, I might just as well consider it a set for playing the predecessor of FIDE chess: Shatranj. The pieces are the same in both variants; it's just the moves of several pieces (especially the firz and alfil, the ancestors of the modern queen and bishop, respectively) that are different.