AnyOne recognize this 5 inch chess set?

Sort:
jftman

Between styles and makers, what is it?


ThankYou for Your comments.

jftman

jftman

tmkroll

That's a Barleycorn set. It's English, probably 19th century. (Re: Modern copy out of India, BK: this looks absolutely nothing look that to me.) Some collectors (Jon Crumiller, etc...) have gone as far as to catalog many such sets and attribute some of them to makers, but I doubt this one is in there. Most often these sets just go by the name of the style, country, approx. age.

jftman

tmkroll

The "anonymous" chess collector did a blog entry attempting to classify all Barleycorn sets some years back and some eBay sellers and things have picked up some of his terminology (some incorrectly IMO, a lot of plain barleycorn sets being sold as "ropetwist" sets these days, but I digress)... Here is his article: http://anonymouschesscollector.blogspot.com/2007/11/barleycorn-sets.html Your set is what he clasifies as English Subtype 2 "Fountain Crown (Flower Crown)" if that helps, but yeah, people mostly just call it a Barleycorn set and leave it at that.  

jftman


That makes sense. The fountain crown. The movie Luzhin Defence had a similar set in Beautiful Crystal. Hard to get screen shots off the trailer. I can’t seem to find that movie on any streaming services that are ‘free with ads’.

 

tmkroll

Well that's something I haven't seen before. I have seen antiques in this style in wood (though most all are in bone, like your set). I would guess the crystal set is modern, maybe even made up for the film but it's a complete guess.