I thnk its more about the nature of market than about the creative artisan's effort.
Design and Price: Sets made by people like Oleg Raikis are many thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, but his sets are not all that novel and produced in very small quantities. Across the market there are few really new designs and those that are successful are protected by the design monopolies delivered by copyright - the work of Ohme, Ernst, Cox (Alcoa), Man Ray for example, and they are either proportionally expensive (Man Ray, but still only a few hundred dollars) or to some degree scarce (the Enrst estate for example holding the supply of reproductions down without pushing the price up because they are concerned about the handful of originals in circulation). I think that the fetishisation of theJaques sets here, followed later by fetishisation of the mid 20th century Russian sets when the Jaques sets got too expensive is a cultural issue in this place, not entirely (a bit, not completely) reflected in the real, commercial, world, the price range is larger than talked about here and serious collectors collect other types as well, but not as far as I am aware, new sets. This is more the starving artist in a garret model (or at best Natalia Danko) than one that provides a nicely funded life.
Effort and the effect of commercial pressure: At 40 to 60 hours of labour, a chess set made in a G20 country in the way you seem to be thinking of is going to have a manufacturing cost of thousands of dollars. Jaques Staunton sets were always mass produced, I strongly suspect in much the same way that the reproductions are produced today with form turning tools, batch work and simple finishes, the expensively hand carved knights being the part of the process that is difficult to optimise, all those techniques hold the effort hours down and focus on the high value-add bits. At scale, distribution costs and resilience matter - as time passes and cost pressures rose the Jaques set designs changed, they acquired bases which were proportionally thicker (moving away from that early wide flange that was likely to crack resulting in returns, probably allowing use of less well seasoned wood, the more cylindrical shape reducing the amount of wood that had to be turned away, moving to more simply carved knights also reduces the production cost. Those pressures come with commercial success and trying to make a profit.
Market scale and expectation: Its not clear to me that the chess set market is big enough or wealthy enough to support more than a handful of the kind of one-at-a-time chess set maker artisans that you describe, I am not sure how far above one that number is. The market for new designs is even smaller (I mean actually new designs, we really don't need more utterly unimaginative Ferderals/Confederates, Nazis/Allies Franklin Mint type sets). Will people pay a lot for artisan made sets with new designs? I think not, I recently saw a price of a couple of hundred US dollars for a quite nice modern design I hadn't seen before, but that doesn't allow a lot of effort to be sunk into a set and the cost to start making a set at scale is likely to be significant - low initial price, low ability to tool up to increase profit, profit constrained by low initial price. Consider what the Graeme Anthony sets sell for, hand-cast bronze for how much? Effectively nothing considering the effort involved. This is in part a problem of how wealthy the market is, and of expectation. I had an email last night offering me a Go board for roughly USD55,000, reduced from 70 (not personally offered, its a mailing list) I've never seen a shogi board for that price but the two objects are very very similar in construction and in what drives production cost, the difference is in the expectation of the market. Until a significant number of chess buyers will spend more than a couple of hundred on a chess set design that is already tuned for mass production there will be no significant number of artisan chess piece makers. This tuning the design for manufacture is in part why we have little to no activity around repro DIeppe sets, early Dutch sets, or repro figural sets, the high volume part of THAT market is probably Harry Potter, the Simpsons and Star Wars where the value is in the movie/TV tie-in rather than the craftsmanship or the presence of super-high quality plastic.
Cheap CNC technology might help with the manufacturing problem, I suspect it is the long term answer for the problem of ugly primitive Staunton knights, but introducing that would clash with manufacturing being done incredibly cheaply by barefoot wood turners sitting in the gloom on the floor of wood shaving strewn factories, and that would damage the somewhat romantic view of chess piece manufacture that some people seem to have. It would also place a floor under the cost of that component (the machinery has costs to run, maintain and periodically replace). In the end however, the work would still be being done with wood, an unreliable and expensive material.
I am not optimistic. I doubt that the kind of chess artisan you are thinking of can be supported by the market except as a kind of side-activity or hobby.
This is an odd topic for me to start because I am neither an artisan, (albeit I have tried and enjoyed turning a few wooden chess pieces) nor do I curate a valuable collection of chess sets. Yet, this is a topic about artisans and value.
I note that Jaques chess pieces may sell for many thousands of dollars, even damaged and flawed. As with any antique - prices seem to be based on rarity, quality, provenance and market demand - among other factors. Sadly (for me 🙂) such original sets are now out of my range but I admire the collections of others.
It is the value of new ‘classics’ that intrigues me. As an hypothetical example: a high-quality chess set of a new design may take 40-60 hrs to turn, carve, sand and finish. This time probably doesn’t include a full account of the creative design process. Next assumption - once the newly designed set is finished - perhaps the carving and finishing time comes down to 30-40 hrs - per set.
So the time alone is a substantial investment. Add to that artistic merit, limited availability(how many sets can one artisan make?), craftsmanship, detail, wood choice, finishing….. the list goes on.
So how is the artisan rewarded? Surely such new sets - those that are aesthetically beautiful and of the highest had-crafted quality sets are as valuable as some rare antiques when times and materials are concerned?
Finally - I suppose it is difficult pose the question without acknowledging that one way of keeping costs down to to design a set and then move manufacture to a lower costs location; and/or design and manufacture in a lower cost location.
I find it an intriguing question - one that I cannot easily answer … how does the artisans get commensurate reward for their time and effort. I suppose, like any artist - it is about their body of work over time; their portfolio and whether people see their portfolio emerging as a work that will stand the test of time, be viewed as of rare quality that such an investment now will only grow over time … but I it’s a very narrow market - finding those collectors - perhaps even benefactors - who have the passion and funds to reward the artisans.
Again, it’s an odd question from me - one who does not participate in the market for the rare, beautiful and high-value but I am still intrigued … and because the question floats around my skull - I thought I’d pose it more broadly too. 😊