CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/1/2017

Masterworks: Rare and Beautiful Chess Sets of the World

Made for export to patrician European households of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ivory chess sets hand-carved in Berhampur, India, for the East India Company (aka the “John Company") are today among the most highly sought after by chess collectors. Reproduced from staff favorite, Masterworks: Rare and Beautiful Chess Sets of the World, featured this weekend in the Wall Street Journal, this 1830 set is from the Jon Crumiller Collection in the position "after 23.... Rd2, in the game Georg Rotlewi vs. Akiba Rubinstein, Lodz, 1907/1908." Crumiller notes, "The standard in John Company sets is that the kings and queens are elephants mounted by royal/upper-class riders on howdahs (i.e. seats or platforms, often with railings and canopies), usually accompanied by mahouts (elephant trainers/caretakers). Bishops are mounted camels, knights are mounted horses, rooks are usually in tower form, and pawns are foot soldiers. There are occasional exceptions to the form of the minor pieces, such as in the set from 1830 in which the white knights are depicted as lions and the black knights as water buffalo."