Pre-Staunton (13th–17th-century) chess set designs
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I’ve familiarized myself with various pre-Staunton chess set designs in the last months, but I never really looked at older designs, besides the Isle of Lewis chessmen, Leonardi Da Vinci’s chess set, and a few other historically significant pieces.
It’s by reading up on Noj’s reproduction of Da Vinci’s chess set that I landed on The Historic Games Shop, which describes various wonderful European chess set designs from the 13th to the 17th century. Both for the sake of creating a quick overview of how these sets evolved as well as my excitement about them, I want to present them here.
Unfortunately there are no images of the actual pieces, but I think the diagrams The Historic Games Shop created are fun to look at. I feel some of these sets have potential for reproductions. Click on the names of the sets to read up on their history.
Alfonso chess set
Bonus Socius chess set
Konrad von Ammenhausen’s Schachzabelbuch chess set
Solacium ludi scaccorum chess set
Regnault de Montauban chess set
Publicius chess set
Lucena chess set
Pacioli chess set (thought to be designed by Leonardo da Vinci)
Damiano chess set
Kobel chess sets
Year: 1520
Albrecht and Anna chess set
Selenus chess set
And from here, we get to the various pre-Staunton chessmen most of us are probably familiar with. I think it’s wonderful to see the designs of the Pacioli and Damiano sets echo in the later pre-Staunton designs. The Kobel sets were already more ornate and wonderful designs for woodturners to be creative with; and then in Albrecht and Anna’s chess set, the dual and triple-tired designs of the Pacioli and Damiano sets return and solidify in Selenus and later sets, where the bishop, knight, rook, and pawn become a bit more standardized.
It’s said that the Staunton chessmen brought the necessary standardization to replace the very diverse forms of pre-Staunton sets, but I actually find many of the 18th and 19th-century sets fairly similar in their core structure. Certainly there are some exceptions with some really ambiguous chess pieces, but I think most of them more or less follow the logic of the Selenus set.
What do you think?