What Makes a Good Chess Set?

I've made a chess set and I'd like to make more, but my only experience playing chess has been here - electronically. I've never actually seen or held good chess pieces in the flesh.

I'm a potter, so it'd be made of stoneware. I'm thinking of a larger, finer set versus a club or travel set. Something that basically lives at home but could be carted around. As traditional as possible. I just don't know the traditions. Things I've considered:

Style - traditional, but a little bit less so because of the clay medium. Woody, in the Monty Python sense.

Weight - as heavy as possible - proportional to the piece? They all make a satisfying clunk when moved. Is a green felt bottom standard? Looking at some sets, it's bright and takes away from the muted colours of the sets. Or is this part of what makes a more traditional set?

Durability - no sticky-outy-bits. Clay can chip. I suppose a lot of chess fans would consider a clay set a liability?

Size - Is the size ratio among all pieces pretty locked in?

Do people leave their sets out? I initially made mine to set up RHP games and think about them.

I don't know. What else is important?

Thank you.

@redpen1919 said
I've made a chess set and I'd like to make more, but my only experience playing chess has been here - electronically. I've never actually seen or held good chess pieces in the flesh.

I'm a potter, so it'd be made of stoneware. I'm thinking of a larger, finer set versus a club or travel set. Something that basically lives at home but could be carted around. As tradit ...[text shortened]... ne to set up RHP games and think about them.

I don't know. What else is important?

Thank you.

Classically shaped pieces carved in heavy stone.

@redpen1919

Bottom-heavy, wide bases, so they cannot be easily knocked over.

@redpen1919

Hate chess sets where the queen is too similar to bishops or the king.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
@redpen1919

Hate chess sets where the queen is too similar to bishops or the king.

Absolutely. The queen isn't similar to anything.

I love pieces that are plain and close to the Jaques of London Staunton chess set, a set chosen for world championship play many times before.

Pieces should be weighted and felted.

Board. To me this is very important, too. Too much contrast (black/white) is a distraction. I use a roll up where the squares are buff and ivory and I love it.

Just some thoughts.

16 pawns, 4 rooks, 4 bishops, 4 knights, 2 queens and 2 Kings, make sure you have one half one color and the other half another color, black and white seem to be traditional.

@redpen1919 said
I've made a chess set and I'd like to make more, but my only experience playing chess has been here - electronically. I've never actually seen or held good chess pieces in the flesh.

I'm a potter, so it'd be made of stoneware. I'm thinking of a larger, finer set versus a club or travel set. Something that basically lives at home but could be carted around. As tradit ...[text shortened]... ne to set up RHP games and think about them.

I don't know. What else is important?

Thank you.

Hardwood is best. One dark and one light. Easy to carry around and durable.
Teak and Oak for example. I live in the tropics so hardwood is commonplace. A good hardwood is like stone.

@redpen1919

Since you're a potter, what would you think of doing one side in Attic red figure, and the opposing side in Attic black figure ?

@trev33 said
16 pawns, 4 rooks, 4 bishops, 4 knights, 2 queens and 2 Kings, make sure you have one half one color and the other half another color, black and white seem to be traditional.

4 queens is becoming more standard for pawn promotion.

@suzianne said
4 queens is becoming more standard for pawn promotion.

You're right, I haven't bought a chess set since 2011 and the pieces were red and black.

Weighted (bottom-heavy) and felted is important, especially with stone, as you don't want it scratching your nice wood or marble board.

Also, I find the base to square-size ratio is important, because to me pieces crowded on a too-small board looks cheap. Most club sets have an excellent ratio that I rarely see in more expensive sets. The best ratio for me is just on the verge of too big.

@redpen1919 said
I've made a chess set and I'd like to make more, but my only experience playing chess has been here - electronically. I've never actually seen or held good chess pieces in the flesh.

I'm a potter, so it'd be made of stoneware. I'm thinking of a larger, finer set versus a club or travel set. Something that basically lives at home but could be carted around. As tradit ...[text shortened]... ne to set up RHP games and think about them.

I don't know. What else is important?

Thank you.

This depends on your intention. Chess sets fall into 2 basic categories:

Tournament sets: If you're going to make these, I'd suggest you first purchase a good quality plastic set, then copy the dimensions and colors as closely as you can with good quality wood or other material.

Artwork sets (aka clown sets): Personally I dislike this a lot! However if you insist on presenting our royal game in a trashy and inferior manner by going this route, at least use quality materials that will endure being dropped, and DON'T do a "themed" set based on a movie or TV show. 😕

tl;dr: Thank you everyone for your input. I really, really appreciate it.

Overall it seems a Proper Chess Set set is going to be a Staunton type of set made of wood. Everything else is going to be a compromise from that. Being made from clay is going to be the biggest deviation from a proper set. I was a slab potter when I first made this. My current set have bases that are stacked square slabs with the detail carved in. The body is a squared version of a normal round body, topped with a detailed slab or two for the appropriate head to sit on. So that style would be the second deviation from a proper set. They're Stauntonesque. But the process and medium kind of forces me to take some liberties. It just means the audience for them is much, much smaller. I'm fine with that. On the other hand, I do want to do right by chess and it's traditions as best I can. I'll make a couple of these and have them on hand as an example of a potting skill set. I hope these don't fall into the clown category.

They're big. 14cm (5 1/2"😉 king at 200g. And all the the tipping points are at around the top part of the bottom third of any piece. The point where it'd fall on to is made more robust for safety.

I agree about the similarities among pieces. I probably played some of my first games with the king and queen mixed up. It should be obvious what's what. And 4 queens seems like the right thing to do. Done.

The board needs to be wood or a rollup, for safety, with big squares. These bases are 4.5cm (1 3/4"😉. Clay and wood get along well. Hardwood would be best. The glazes will be a matte black that pools in the details as silvery black. The whites will be a semi gloss concrete grey that melts into then pools into a grey/black. It's another step away from tradition, but the glazes are a strong point for the medium.

I've got a couple glazes that'd come close to the Attic Red. If I made more than a couple of these sets, I'd love to give it a shot. The problem is, where the glaze is thick, it goes black. Where it's thin, it's that red. So both white and black would use the same glaze and it'd be confusing, unfortunately.

I've got some thin black and white felt. Enough to keep the board clean and for the piece to have a confident clunk when placed.

Thanks again everyone for indulging me. And sorry about the wot. It'll help me refine some of what I'm doing and also have an idea of where this might sit among possible sets. All the best.

*those winky emojies are supposed to be closing brackets. Here it sounds like I'm trying to pull a fast one on the sizes. 😉

@suzianne said
Weighted (bottom-heavy) and felted is important, especially with stone, as you don't want it scratching your nice wood or marble board.

Note, though, that the felt doesn't have to be green. It often is, but I wouldn't know why. Maybe because felt of that kind is often used in model making to represent grass and therefore green is more common and cheaper? Anyway, felt in the colour of the stone or wood is fine. But yes, for wooden (or plastic, ugh) pieces felt is good; for stone or ceramic ones, necessary.

Unlike most players, I don't mind non-Staunton pieces, but within limits. After all, not all diagrams use the same graphics either, but they all try to be clear.

- The sides must be clearly distinguishable by colour, one clearly light, one dark. Not multicoloured with small black and white marks, not middle red and middle green.
- The pieces must all be clearly distinguishable by shape alone, and it must be immediately clear which is which without having to investigate them. The Lewis chessmen get away with warders for rooks only because the rest are clearly what they are. Dragons for one and wizards for the other makes me grab my knight when I wanted my bishop.
- What helps a lot is if the relative sizes are the same as Staunton pieces. At the very least the king must be clearly larger than the queen, who must be larger than the rest, and the pawn must clearly be the smallest. The relative sizes of B,N and R aren't as critical as long as they're otherwise clear.
- The sides must be identical or close to it in shape. Kings with the same crowns but different swords is OK, but leave the cannons vs. catapults to xiangqi.
- As a practical matter, the pieces must be stable and not too fragile, and be easily and comfortably handleable.

And obviously, I'd never use a non-Staunton set in competition. But for a friendly game or the coffee table, why not?