NOJ's Tal Set--"An Anthem to the Reproduction of Chess Pieces"

https://www.chessbazaar.com/reproduced-1961-soviet-championship-series-chess-set-in-ebony-wood-box-wood-4-2-king.html

Here is the CB version.  The knight seems a bit fatter than the Noj, but still a nice set.  They did a good job with the pawns and rooks.  With a 35 percent off promo, it will be around 225 US shipped.  I just signed up to be notified when it is back in stock, I'm bummed that I missed out on the first batch!

As a comparison, first is a picture of the Noj set:

And now the picture from Chess Bazaar:

Please understand that I do not personally care for this design and will not be looking to buy one.

However, if I were going to buy one it would definitely be the Noj version.

fewlio is quick to point out that the CB version will cost him a bit over $200.  Guess what.  That's still a lot of money for a Chess set.  It is not an inexpensive price..

For CB to knock off this set from Noj is indeed tacky and of poor professional taste.  Noj created this design from photographs and images alone.  There was no original set to copy for reproduction.  Of course thanks to fewlio and a few cheap others, CB went ahead and copied from Noj.

And what do you get for a few hundred dollars less?  The answer is you get poorer quality woods and finish.  You get substantially poor quality workmanship from the initial carving to all the finish work.  And you also get much less quality and amount of service.  You also get the guilt of supporting a charlatan company in their cheap and ethically lower level of copying a very recent release of a fine Chess set.

It is clear than CB did not rip off the NOJ set, they just made their own modern interpretation of that classic 1961 set.  The pieces do not match piece for piece with the NOJ set, but some of the overarcing concepts of the tal set are present in both interpretations.  Also, I prefer the grain of the boxwood in this instance, and ebony wood for black is more luxurious than the european wood.  I prefer the Noj knight version, but not for 700 US dollars, I'll save that 500 and buy the CB version myself.

The precision of Noj's craftsmanship is clearly evident with those two shots showing the difference between the light armies. Noj's bases are all uniformed in the thickness/height ratio to the pieces. Chessbazaar is all over the place with the thickness/height ratio of all of their base pieces. There's no continuity. The CB knight looks as if it was inflated with pressurized air and is just about to pop. The CB king is more of a Staunton style entry. I wouldn't obtain this set if you gave it to me. Noj is clearly the superior craftsmanship here by miles.

I disagree because it's the pawn and rook that make the Tal set fantastic.  The knight is not the showpiece it often is in other sets.  It's bigger but not of cartoon style proportions, it's clearly the same style knight made a bit larger, probably because so many players prize knights (or in the style of the popular latvian set knight which is similarly large).  But imo that isn't one of the critical pieces.  The pawn and rooks are most important to me.

This is really a beautiful set. You have done well grasshopper!

Please explain to us how it is clear that CB did not rip off the Noj set.  The fact is that the photos available of the original set are scant and difficult to get a scaled impression from. 

Remember that Chuck and Phil had a person draw up technical and detailed drawings of each piece.  Then Gregor made many, many trials of the pieces until they obtained that which was accurate and acceptable.

For you to say that CB did all that work, from scratch, in such a short amount of time is ridiculous.  Please do not attempt to distort the obvious.  CB literally ripped off this design from Noj.  Their carvers and "artisans" could not and therefore did not make the pieces to be of a similar, high quality design as the Noj version.  The CB carvers are not good enough or qualified to make such a nice set in such a short amount of time either in design or production.  Hence you will see a lower price.  But remember, this is by no means a cheap price.  It is a higher cost than a good number of CB sets have been and currently are.  And for the same amount of money, OS and HoS produce much nicer sets.

Whether you admit it or not, you are paying a high price for crappy product.

This reminds me of threads in woodwork forums which talk about Chinese plane makers ripping off American plane makers' designs which, instead of being ripoffs of Stanley designs, are carefully engineered copies.  The difference is in the wording, evil Chinese ripoffs and virtuous American reproductions.  It looks to me like there are a lot of variants of the Dubrovnik pattern, and the simultaneous objections in this thread that they are both poorly designed and exact copies of the NoJ pieces says something about the argument.

Please understand the point(s) I am trying to make:

1. Two individuals decided to have an accurate reproduction of a Soviet Chess set that is seen in the era which included Tal and the professional players of that time using and seen in pictures from that time.

2. There were and are no original sets to be found for reproduction purposes.  All they had to go by were those photographs from events held back at that time.

3. Those photos were all right but certainly not to scale for reproduction purposes.

4. These fellows paid a professional to make technical and detailed drawings of those pieces from the photographs.

5. They then convinced Gregor who owns Noj to make this reproduction set based off the photos and technical drawings.

6. Gregor then proceeded to painstakingly create the pieces by making many pieces over and over until the most accurate reproduction of each piece was successful.

7. Gregor, his brother, and their father are the only ones making Chess sets as Noj.  The father is retired and only comes in to do the finish work of staining, if called for, and then putting on numerous coats of lacquer to attain an excellent finish.

8. Because a few people reading this forum decided they did not want to spend the asking price for this set, they convinced Chess Bazaar to make their own reproduction.

6. Chess Bazaar came out with their version of the set after a short period of time.  The time was so short that there is no way Chess Bazaar could have made this reproduction without using the work of Gregor and his family, along with the design work that Chuck and Phil did and employed.

7. When comparing the different sets, it is obvious that the carvers Chess Bazaar use do not even come close to the quality of Gregor and Noj.  And this lack of quality begins with the wood selection and curing, or lack of it, all the way through the process to the final finish work with most likely far less coats of lacquer and finish work.

8. Chess Bazaar is definitely in the market to make and sell low end products.  Of course they have raised their prices over the last year of so, so the quality remains low end while the prices are being raised.

9. Understand that I am not insulting Chess Bazaar.  I am simply pointing out that there is no way they could duplicate any of the quality of the Noj sets.

10. The only evil I see in this is the low ethics of Chess Bazaar in ripping off, or blatantly taking the design and production work of Chuck, Phil and Noj.

11. I argue that because of the wood currently available in India that even the better produced sets from India can never be as high of a quality or as good as sets made from woods that are from and made elsewhere, such as in Europe like Noj.

12. In my opinion fewlio would be far better not posting on this forum at all.  From what he says, he is all about not spending the money and that is crass.

13. Chess Bazaar made and sold sets that look similar to this latest one that are priced a lot less than this set.  They raised their prices simply because they can and want to make more profit.  I bought their Latvian set about a year ago or so and only paid about $100.  In all honesty this latest set of theirs is not that much nicer than the Latvian set.  Yes, even at $220 or so that fewlio says he is going to buy the set for, he is paying a lot more than the set is worth.  And in that I find true humor seeing that he has been all about the money when posting on this forum.

Eyechess,

The original design is apparently not copyrighted, so CB can make their own variant if they want.  Is it protected in some way?  

I agree that the NoJ sets are nicer and it appears that the CB sets are sufficiently different that I very much doubt that they stole the NoJ design, they just made one that is similar.   The bulk of the design work is not in the broad outline, thats what you get at the napkin stage, but in the details of the proportions, which is where the differences between NoJ and CB are and where a number of the criticisms have been made here come from. 

Why do you think that Indian timber is necessarily lower quality than European timber?  Its a price issue, not a matter of geography. Box is expensive and difficult to obtain in Europe in quantity now, the same economic dynamic will apply in Europe as in India. Apparently India has Buxus Sempervirens as a native plant.   

As for capitalists selling things for what people will pay for them, thats not something I'm going to be shocked by.  

I thought Neanderthals got their exercise by hunting and fishing, but apparently its from jumping to erroneous conclusions. If you remember, Neanderthal, you were often wrong in the Anna Rudolf vs. the World game, and you're wrong here too.

Both the Chinese and Indians are well known for intellectual property theft. They never would have thought of recreating this somewhat obscure 1961 set if Chuck hadn't been enamored with it and Noj hadn't agreed to make his dream a reality. Then the thieving Indians come along and copy it, probably at the request of throwbacks like you, and make a few "modifications" so you and others say "see, it's not a copy." Give us all a break.

By the way, Ron, never argue with a Neanderthal because he's only there to get your goat ... and roast it over a fire.

Enjoy your Bizarro, Neanderthal, I'd bet it cracks or warps on you.

Anyone who makes a statement like "I very much doubt that they stole the NoJ design" knows nothing about making chess sets.  You and that other bluejay (a bird who steals other bird's nests), Neanderthal, need to get together with Chess Bizarro and find out how to steal more designs.

Oh abuse, how sweet, and a non-sequitur to boot.  I didn't know that the intellectual property laws were different for chess sets, in that case the design belongs to either FIDE, P. Poček or A. Maurović.  Are you sure that NoJ properly licensed the design from them?  Thats not the way that the story has been told so far.  

Let's refrain from the name calling. I personally agree with Ron and the others here who say that the making of this chess set by cb was unethical at the least. I used to be in between views on this topic, but actually seeing the pictures of the set just made me feel a bit sad inside. The words run off the mill, blatant and poor come to mind. I was never interested in anything cb sold, to be honest, mostly because the individual pieces in their sets look like a jumble of different ideas and styles rather than a collected 'whole', but also because their knights are often simply overstated and vulgar looking. I also feel proud of the fact that I chose to invest in a Noj set now and look forward to its arrival in the new year. 

On a different note: I've been questioning whether maybe I should change my order of a dubrovnik II in walnut and maple to a stained version, perhaps red or brown. I agree with Frank when he said that the staining on these pieces looks superb. I'm more drawn to natural wood colours, also because of the grain, but on the other hand maple and walnut pieces might be more difficult to pair with a board than brown stain and maple, which itself would look good on a walnut and maple board. I'd like to say I'll wait and see when the set gets here, but I feel oddly excited about the set itself and am therefore thinking of the best ways to accommodate it. Do any of you Noj dubrovnik (I or II) owners have any advice in this matter? With which boards do you pair your dubrovniks?

Cute trick, Mr. Hunt, trying to make a moral equivalence between Noj's work on the 1961 USSR Championship set and CB's unscrupulous and unceremonious knockoff following on Noj's heals. It takes a legalistic mind to operate just within the law without any consideration for the ethics of one's actions. That's the stock in trade of countries like China and India. Apparently, all's fair in trade and ripoffs.

At least one of the designers you mentioned was responsible for the Dubrovnik, but do you have any evidence that he had anything to do with the original 1961 set? If so, we'd all like to see it. I think if Chuck would have found the original designer, he'd have tired to contact his estate for permission to recreate the set and borrow the original to work from. As Chuck said, he couldn't find an original and had to work with Noj on plans that required tweaking until each piece was close to the original. On the other hand, all CB had to do is use a CNC lathe or pantograph to get the measurements off a Noj, though they may not have been even that hi-tech.

Interestingly, I once asked Frank Cammarata if he would consider making a copy of the Max Ernst avant garde set (below). He said no, not unless he wanted to run into problems with the artist's estate. Obviously, it is important to get written permission ... if possible.

Hardly a cute trick, its how IP works even though you don't want it to, a good deal of the rest of what you write is just florid trolling.  The Ernst estate sues people, thats why there are so few (not zero, but few) reproductions of that set.  As for "NoJs work", you are just providing an example what I described in my first comment on this thread: casting things in terms of virtuous europeans and evil asians.  Saying it over and over with different adjectives is not make it any more persuasive to the moderately literate.   

what was my mistake in the rudolf game?  according to the computer analysis, she made more errors than us.  guess ours was worse?  My moves were the best moves we came up with, period.

Has anyone noticed how much shorter and less elegant the CB rook is when compared to the Noj rook?

The only abuse in this topic is actually coming from you.

I do not suffer fools gladly.  No one talked about or argued anything about the legalities in this, except you.  Stop talking about what is legal and not legal.  That is not pertinent to the discussion.  No one has said that Chess Bazaar has done anything illegal in this..

You are also being quite the fool saying that Chess Bazaar evidently created this set without looking at the Noj reproduction for copying.  The evidence is that before Noj produced this set, there were none to examine, measure or otherwise consider for copying or reproduction purposes.

The only representations of that design before Noj created it was in photos of the set in a few tournament settings.  And those photos were focused on the players, not the sets or pieces.  The photos available only gave a slight  image of what the pieces should look like and did not give any kind of easy image for obtaining the details for making the pieces to correct dimensions and designs.

Remember that Chuck and Phil paid a professional to make the detailed drawings, to scale, for production purposes.  And when it came to the production of the pieces, Gregor of Noj had to make many, many pieces with constant modifications to finally attain the correct design and measurements.  And this took months.. not days or weeks.

For you to say that Chess Bazaar did all the above on their own in such a short time is an insult to the intelligence of this forum community.

The evidence shows that Chess Bazaar had to use the Noj reproduction to copy.  Sorry for you, you are on the wrong path to the truth, fool.

I still want to hear from fewlio why he has decided to pay too much money to Chess Bazaar for this inferior Chess set.  Let's face it, $225 is still a lot of money to pay for a Chess set.  If you can afford $225 for a Chess set, you can surely afford $600 for one.  I'm sorry, fewlio, but you can no longer use the excuse that you cannot afford a Noj set when you are now paying way too much for a piece of crap from Chess Bazaar.

Eyechess, the truth is some would say the more visual evident grain in the NOJ european woods is more beautiful, but I like the very subtle grain of the white boxwood pieces, there's still the hint that it is wood, but it is almost a solid light color which is very nice for white.  And obviously ebony wood is the ideal wood species for black pieces, and is extremely luxurious.  It's not even available in europe.  But this is just a matter of preference.  Also, I do believe that CB will get the price down from 350 US msrp.  They just didn't have that many, and are trying to soak the first buyers.  This set is not superior to other russian/ussr sets such as latvian or zagreb, it is merely another fine set of the same category.  So I expect the price to hit the same kind of prices those sets go for.  However, if CB never budges off the 350 pre coupon price, yes I will buy it, and several members of my chess club are also on a waiting list to buy this set!  There are many ukranians, russians and germans from russia in my area of the United States and CB has done a fantastic job in general with their russian/ussr era homage sets.  They have served the needs of a market that is yearning for something different than the traditional staunton designs.  It's interesting that the russians were so dedicated to chess, and the many beautiful innovative  ussr  designs are a testament to the love and respect they have for the game!