“Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.”
— Anatoly Karpov, 12th World Chess Champion

Do you like chess? With all due respect to Anatoly Karpov, he forgot the most important thing in his definition – chess is first and foremost a game! That is the reason why the child in us loves chess even in the deepest age. And as in any game, the shape of the toys is always very important. Beautiful toys will draw you into the game. The ugly ones will not necessarily turn you away from the game, but they will make you look for nicer and better shaped toys.

I started with toys produced by the Subozan factory in Subotica, former Yugoslavia. My first chess set was done in the Austrian style, with stylized pieces that all had the same base diameter, and the King and the Queen with a spikes on top. They were easy to produce, cheap wooden pieces that were ubiquitous all over Eastern Europe at the time of my childhood. And here is my first chess set:

This set is now with my nephew Paul, who begins a new cycle of playing with it:

But let’s go back to history. Chess is an ancient game that has been reserved for the nobility for centuries, and the nobility has always loved to have beautiful toys. And those chess pieces intended for the nobility were lavish, handmade, carved and often made as realistic mini-sculptures.

Thematic chess pieces followed almost all major historical events. For Example:

However, as much as they were thrilling as miniature masterpieces, from the point of view of practical play they were not in the least suitable. They are good if you play informal games with friends without a time limit, partly good for learning of younger categories, but for all other purposes – like analysis, competitive chess, blitz games – they are simply not usable. In addition, the more ornaments and carvings on them, the more prone to damage they are… However, as we said, chess as a game will always have the largest number of fans in children, and therefore there will always be toy sets:

Nobody was bothered by sculptured pieces until the middle of the nineteenth century. Chess became very popular in Europe during the Renaissance, and with the birth of a new, capitalist class, which emerged with the ideology of competition, the spread of chess as a game of competition of minds began. To popularize chess as a competition, it was necessary to style and design the pieces so that they were suitable for practical play. In 1849, the standard was proposed in London…

Following in the next part: Staunton standard