Few people know the story behind the Staunton Chess Set and why it became so popular. It was a great representation of the Victorian Age, where Kings and Queens ruled, lived in castles and horseback was the fastest form of travel.
But times have changed and of all the sporting equipment we use today, only chess pieces seem outdated. Who could imagine using golf clubs or tennis rackets that were 170 year old designs, yet we use chess pieces that bare little relevance to the Computer Age, Why is that? The short answer is that old habits die hard in the chess world.
Children who are learning the game wonder why the pawn looks like a doorknob or a castle is used for a rook. Everything about the Staunton Style pieces is confusing when you think about it. Why do we call them pawns when we have pawn shops? Why a rook when a rook is also a crow or a scoundrel?
Lichess offers several 2D piece sets to use and I currently use Alpha because I believe it offers the most familiar clarity. I've tried all the piece sets to see if it affects my play and it certainly does. Some of them are so bad I suspect I could beat a GM if they were to offer me odds of playing with them instead of their favorite.
What is your current piece set and which is the worst? Could Lichess eliminate any or is there even possibly a better choice more fitting of the Space Age? I think there is.
Glad he didn't get around to queen!
Isn't the Victorian Age the age of industrialism? If the Staunton set is outdated, it was already outdated, then.
I'm playing with the cburnett (that's the first set). Its knight is not as defined as merida's. For me, it's wooden; but not wooden as alpha's. cburnett is tangible 2-d compared to alpha's stamps or merida's goofy shading.
Interesting, that we should still live in space age.. not sure I feel it.
Let's stay down to earth.
The Victorian Age was 1837-1901 and the Staunton Chessmen were designed by John Jaques around 1848 and patented by his brother-in-law, Nathianel Cook, who was also one of the editors of The London Illustrated Times, that employed Howard Staunton as the chess columnist during that time.
Howard wrote favorably about the chess set that was used at the unofficial first world chess championship at the Crystal Palace during the London Expo of 1851.
All the players were forced to use the Staunton style instead of the various sets used at the time like The Barleycorn, Edinburgh Uprights, French Regence and others.
The players initially complained and didn't want to use the set because they thought Howie would have an unfair advantage because he was so familiar with the design. They hummed and hawed and were eventually coerced so that the tournament would have a standard set to use instead of a mishmash picked by a coin toss.
After the tournament( where the term Grand Master was first used btw) all the players were given a Staunton Set to bring back home and became kind of ambassadors of the design unknowingly.
The set was an improvement on sets of the time because it was made on the wood lathe instead of carved by hand, so it was easy to mass produce and within a generation it was the set of choice by most of the world and officially adopted by FIDE about 100 years ago.
If it wasn't for the Howard Staunton name, we might still be using delicate top heavy ornamental pieces to play over the board.
I have several sets of the soviet and eastern Europe design, when they tried to remove religion from the design. Kings do not have a cross on top, bishops do not have the miter cardinal caps. Sometimes the bishops have a slot or creve cut, but more often they are simply round with an opposite color "cap" on top.
Once a tournament director told me my set did not match the rules, due to the opposite color caps. My opponent, an old hand, said "no, that is a standard set in many parts of the world." Afterwards I checked the rules and it says roughly "Staunton or any other design that is generally accepted and used in tournament play."
I generally like old designs, St George or Dublin or other, other than Staunton, but the de la Regence sets can be confusing.
I am not a fan of the new "artistic" and "modern" designs, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
For a while we had a couple coming to our club who had a set of a nautical theme, mermaids, sea captains, fish and boats. Unique and amusing, but it disconcerted one member so much that he refused to play with that set.
I also played a tournament game with an opponent using his eastern european set with lots of adornment on all the pieces, some looking like court jesters with the pointed hats.
Variety is the spice of life.
Well, much information about Staunton Chess set is here:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staunton_chess_setThanks
@Akbar2thegreat this is a really good article that explains much of the story. When I was researching a US Patent over 25 years ago, there was none of this information available and most encyclopedias had Staunton listed as the designer of the pieces and not as just a spokesman for the company.
It wasn't until about 1998 or so that I noticed that they gave credit to Cooke and then around 2000 we discovered it was actually Cooke's brother-in-law John Jaques that was the real designer and craftsman that manufactured the pieces.
I follow Joe Jaques on Instagram who is 8th generation of Jaques and Sons and recently I commented that Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth met while playing croquet and they probably used a set made by Jaques because at the time of the Staunton Design, they were also known to make the finest croquet sets in the world. They are also the inventors of Tiddly Winks and most proudly, Ping Pong and in existence for close to 2 centuries.
@sparowe14 You sound like a collector and might appreciate an experience I had recently as I was passing an antique store. There was chess set that caught my eye in display window so I popped my head in the door and said to the owner,
"excuse me, how much is that Barleycorn chess set in the window"> he smiled and said, "750 dollars with the board...what did you call it"? I repeated what I said and then went on to ask him some details like the age of the set and if it had been damaged and what material it was made from etc.
He couldn't really answer anything because chess is probably not his thing and shop owners often use chess sets to grab peoples attention. It looked authentic though and I suspect it had been glued together at some point because it was delicate looking and unless it was never used and stored in a vault until recently was more then likely hiding some warts.
So I took a photo and when I got home I confirmed the design with a book I have called Master Pieces and a Google search showed that that set is actually undervalued, so I just might go and take a closer look after some time goes by so he forgets that I know more than him. I don't need the board which is nothing special, so if I can get it for 500 I might go for it.
zccvgsszdztfjffdgdxkyhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhxt79vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv7777777777777777777777777777777b89. ol'ihhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuggbpbii[]po]p[][]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]uiiiiiiiiiiii9iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Staunton/Jaques had their time. The lazy chess world pushes pieces pre-modern, while space and computer age yielded no common designs.
Why do pawns look like doorknobs, mummy? Functional design, honey, they were ahead of their time at Jaques'! The name pawn stems from the latin word pedonem, meaning one going on foot, here foot soldier. Never leave a pedonem as a pandum in a pawn-shop.
Why do they take a castle for a rook, daddy? An amalgam, containing features of the Persian war-chariot heavily armoured, siege tower and fortress. Also think of town halls and silos, my dear. And of craft. Flies like rook, the bird, only when castling. In the endgame can be quite the scoundrel!
But mommy, daddy, I want to play chess as a mental sport! Why can't we get rid of all this old-fashioned battle of war and have crystal-clear geometrical designs? No, look, kiddie, you'll understand. It's us, down there on the board. We play, we move according to rules, oriented vertically, horizontally, diagonally -or neither, as in case of the knight. Since it is us playing , we needn't and want not duplicate move rules in the design of pieces. Ah, so it's quite good we are still with the pieces of old, then? Yeah! Sure it's good! Space and computer age did not take us off the board, yet. Chance is, we will play ourselves for a while, all down to earth :) ;( ;)
