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Abstract chess set
Around the age of twenty, I designed and made this abstract chess set. Here,
pieces are merely geometric shapes, only vaguely resembling their forms in
more usual sets. The idea was that their shapes represent their movement
capabilities in some way: rooks become cubes (representing the rectangular
movement), bishops pyramids, queens balls (representing that they can go `to
all directions', and kings have a shape of a `plus', reminding of the cross at
the head in Staunton pieces, and representing the `1'-square distance they go.
Knights have a shape that gives the starting, jumped over, and ending square
of a knight-jump. At hindsight, I am not so happy with my choice to take a
small ball for pawns (representing their ability to promote to queen), and
think that a cylinder would have been better.
I made this set from clay. It has been displayed once at an exhibition of
unorthodox chess sets, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the `Bennekomse
Schaakvereniging'; one of the organizers of the exhibition was my father.
There is an index to more photo's of usual and
unorthodox chess sets.
Written and photo's by Hans Bodlaender.
WWW page created: January 29, 1997. Last modified: August 17,
1998.
Last modified: Monday, December 22, 2008
