New HoS Morphy series

Just received a new set of pieces from House of Staunton and am pretty pleased. Morphy series 4 inch king.

With apologies for the amateur pictures and less than ideal background. For better pics here is a link to cgrau's and goodnightmike’s excellent pictures of the same set albeit 4.4 inch king: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/house-of-stauntons-morphy-set?page=2

Talking about size this is I think for a 4 inch king set this is on the hefty side and definitely needs a 2.375 inch square board. The set takes for example more space than my 4.4’ king 1849 set, and is dwarfing my Marshall 4’ set. The 4.4’ of this Morphy set must feel like significant tools!

Also interesting is the difference in rooks for the 4’ and 4’4 inch sets. The rooks on cgrau’s pics are, as he also mentioned, tall. In fact slightly taller than a knight. The 4’ set rook is of a different (more conservative/classical?) cut and slightly shorter than the knight. 

As most here will no doubt know, but just for the record; the title Morphy has nothing to do with the Jaques-Morphy design. This is a design from HoS from already quite a while ago. And a very well done and proportioned design it is imho. As I discover every time after opening a box of a newly arrived set: the real thing is so much better than online pictures and a very pleasant surprise at that. 

In case you contemplate buying make sure what you will get. On the site’s page the white pieces are altogether wrong and I couldn’t identify them. https://www.houseofstaunton.com/the-morphy-series-luxury-chess-pieces-4-0-king.html 

The smudge on the knight’s base looks awful on the picture, in real it’s hardly noticable.

Also a succesful experiment was the stripping and new shellac finish of the box. Got a damaged box so with the hinges repair came also a new look. I do not really understand that thick red goo on the standard boxes that make everything look like plastic. Under that is some nicely grained wood (veneer, but still nice) that I like to see.

White king weighs 110 gram, black king 123 gr, size is actual 4.12 inch.

Slightly tight but still possible. Would look like this (2.25 inch squares):

I was thinking about this and have to give some caution. As I just posted yesterday about proportions of board and pieces it is very hard to tell from pictures. In this picture I would also say this looks ok, but having seen this in real I would feel it too crowded to play a game. Yes, this is a 4’ king set, but as I described above this is a very hefty set for this size. I have the 1849 set from HoS in 4.4’ king, but apart from the king obviously, all the other Morphy pieces are slightly bigger! Pawns are significantly bigger.

According to my own formula the proportion of this set on a 2.25 inch sq. board would be 1.38 meaning the board size is 1.38 times bigger than the pieces. Or to put it another way; the pieces on the first row covering 72% of the squares. My ideal number would be 69%. Seems a small difference, for your eyes it is a lot. This Morphy HoS is even still ok on a 2.5 inch sq when the first row would occupy 65% . ( I know that technically this is not true; I would have to calculate the surface area of the 8 circles of the pieces in relation to the surface of 8 squares, then you would have it perfectly scientifically correct, but my way gives me a workable number.)

It is of course totally a matter of taste, (maybe the pic is exactly to your taste) but now anyone’s taste can have a number to work with quite accurately.