Chess Sets: Staunchly Staunton

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Why do chess sets look like, well, chess sets? The short answer is that, when you go to war, you need to be able to recognize the enemy. And until the mid-nineteenth century, before there was a “standard” appearance for chess sets, gentlemen who had chess sets made according to their own personal design had an advantage over their opponents, who were not familiar with the appearance of the pieces. In Great Britain alone, numerous styles of chess sets, including the Saint George, Calvert, Merrifield, Edinburgh, and Lund, were in use. But the finely detailed design, and in some cases, instability, of their pieces, rendered them both expensive and impractical. And there were variations from set to set within a particular design, making it difficult for players to distinguish the identities of the pieces. As chess players dissatisfied with the situation began demanding a uniformly designed, inexpensive chess set, a London ivory merchant, John Jaques, who had been providing chess sets to London retailers, displayed in his 1849 pattern book a new chess set. The pieces of the new set most closely resembled the existing Edinburgh pattern, but Jaques stabilized them with lead, and broader bases. Removing the more fragile design details, he made the chess set both less fragile, and less costly, putting it within in the financial reach of many more players. The actual design of the chess set had been registered to Jaques’ brother-in-law, Nathaniel Cook, in the spring of 1849. Whether Cook actually invented the design, or simply agreed to register it, is uncertain. But, to Jaques’ great good fortune, Cook was also an editor of the Illustrated London Times, where British Chess Master, and unofficial World Chess Champion, Howard Staunton, was the staff writer of a chess column. Staunton agreed, for a small royalty on each set sold, to lend it his name and write a chess instruction pamphlet for inclusion in each set sold. The Illustrated London Times, doing its part, posted, in an advertisement on September 8, 1849: "A set of Chessmen...has recently appeared under the auspices of the celebrated player Mr. STAUNTON. A guiding principle has been to give by their form a signification to the various pieces--thus the king is represented by a crown, the Queen by a coronet, and it is to be remarked, that while there is so great an accession to elegance of form, it is not attained at the expense of practical utility...the pieces being of a large diameter, they are more steady than ordinary sets." Sturdy, simple, and affordable, and chess for the masses was on its way.