Post Your Chess Sets

Try a laxative and call me in the morning.

Where to?

Brynmr,

Great looking set! Love the striped ebony. I've got a board exactly like that one! Congrats, enjoy.

Awesome thread.  Greatly enjoying looking at all the different sets.

I have more sets than I know what to do with. Everywhere from an ANRI set, Onyx, cheap plastic and pewter Golf themed that cost me a small fortune and weights a metric ton.

These are my two favourites for just analyzing moves when I play online:

the first image is my all time favourite. I have never seen another set like this since I bought it over 30 years ago. I carry this all over the house on a wood board.

the second is on a custom made marble board.  Pretty heavy, love the board, not the pieces so much. I use this second set when looking at an intense game and need two boards to study moves.

Striping difficult to see unless under a strong light but I like it. 

A bit off topic for a moment but where do you guys advertise to sell your chess sets? 

The striping makes it authentic, unlike most ebony out there, which is faux ebony, striped with a stain coating. Much like covering expensive wood paneling with a coat of brown paint!

Funky board in progress...

Funky board cool!

Yes, it is common practice to “fake” the striped ebony to be completely black.  Now please don’t get upset thinking that we say this “faking” is some kind of rip off or otherwise cheating the customer.  As you said this is a common practice.

What Lou is saying is that the natural coloring of the Striped Ebony is beautiful by itself, especially in Chess pieces.  And it is a shame that people are making it completely black so it looks like the more elusive and expensive Ebony that is black on its own.

Sellers should make it clear that their ebony is stained to look like the more expensive black ebony. But they don't. When I bought my 1st ebony set from CB I had no idea the wood was stained black. I thought I got naturally black ebony because the pieces were completely black.

Ebony (stained)

Ebony (unstained)

To each their own, personally, it isn't worth the extra bucks to me. I had an ebonized Dubrovnik set from the House of Staunton that was such high-quality I couldn't tell the difference. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. . .

I like being able to see the grain in ebony. I think a lot of modern sets have some sort of black staining on top, which is a shame

There was a time when instrument and chess set makers would only pay for jet-black ebony. Here's what real ebony looks like when you don't leave 90% of the harvest to rot on the forest floor because it isn't jet black.

@IpswichMatt, the Indian producers treat the ebony wood chemically to make it as black as possible, which is a shame indeed. Indian ebony has such a beautifully decent grain. When I had the Augustea set made, I expressly asked for natural untreated ebony and chose the pieces with the most visible grain.

It all comes down to 'fashion,' a popular trend, especially in styles.

Strange, but no musicians seem to complain when their cherished rosewood instruments come with stripes! To quote one of my favorite Eagles tunes, "Get Over It," or get under it!

Good choice, it's beautiful.

Nooooooooo! Did they really waste that wood? IMO that beats the jet black look every time! I wonder if this obsession with wanting them as dark as possible started before plastic was invented?  

I imagine it's not just chess sets. Ebony has always been a high-end wood in demand for various purposes and its distinctive feature is being very dark, so provided that the wood remains relatively abundant, it makes sense for suppliers to concentrate on the darkest stuff to maintain the premium price.

Overexploitation means that there isn't nearly as much ebony around as there used to be, so suppliers are probably more inclined to take what they can get and sell the stripy stuff as well as the jet black wood.