Does anyone have more info about this set?
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I recently purchased an interesting set at ChessUSA. It was titled "Artistic Ram's Head Design" and I just liked the look of it. Apparently it had been sitting on the shelf for years and was the last one they had in stock. A Google search didn't turn up anything useful, but I coincidentally started reading "The Immortal Game" last night, which is a history of chess. It mentioned the Dadaist-Cubist artist Marcel Duchamp, who was friends with Man Ray. Duchamp became obsessed with chess in his early 30's to the exclusion of most other things, including his art. The book mentioned that he designed a chess set and I wondered what it looked like so I did another search. What popped up was a set that looked incredibly similar to mine. Here is an old photo of Duchamp's set, and a modern recreation of it:
While my set has some key design differences, what I have is clearly a very similar set:
What I found in my reading is that the knight is not a ram, but is a horse...a sea horse. However, since my knights lack the "mane," that is not as obvious.
The Duchamp set was never commercially produced, and the original hasn't been seen for about a century, though it is rumored to be in private collection somewhere. About 5-6 years ago, a tech company named Readymake develop and posted 3D files online of the pieces based on old photos, but they were removed after the Duchamp estate threatened legal action for copyright infringement.
So that is what I know. If anyone has more info about the Duchamp set, or when/where the set I just bought was produced. I'd be interested to hear. Thanks.