What is the most common type of antique chess set?

A Staunton-pattern set of turned pieces in boxwood against ebony or ebonised wood, supplied in a wooden box. Staunton is named in a quarter of titles on Sellingantiques. Weighting is a frequent companion to that description, with lead let into the bases. Boxed and cased sets together account for a large slice of the titles.

Are boards sold separately from the pieces?

Often. Board is the commonest single word in these titles, at close to a third, so boards on their own make up roughly the same portion of the category as playing sets. They range from plain folding wooden boards through marquetry and parquetry timber to marble, malachite, glass and tooled leather.

Which patterns other than Staunton turn up?

The archive is unusually varied on this point. Besides Staunton, it has carried St George, Old English, Barleycorn, Whittington, Edinburgh Upright, Selenus, Regence, Lyon, Burmese and Washington patterns. St George is the English pattern that preceded Staunton and ran alongside it. Selenus is a German type of stacked, disc-turned pieces.

How old are most antique chess sets on the market?

The dealers' date field spans 1800 to 1930. Fewer than half of the listings give a clean year, and the rest fall back on '19th Century', 'Victorian' or 'Edwardian'. Where decades are stated, they cluster late, in the 1900s through the 1930s, with far fewer in the 1850s and 1860s. A few titles go earlier, including ivory sets given as circa 1780 and circa 1830.

What is a travelling chess set?

Board, box and pieces combined in one portable object. Travelling appears in about a tenth of titles, often paired with leather or with the word folding. The 'In Statu Quo' types peg or slot their pieces into the board so a game survives the journey. At the smallest end are miniature sets whose whole board folds into a pocket case.

Do bone and ivory chess sets appear often?

They make up roughly one in eight of the listings, with bone slightly ahead of ivory. Carved sets are a smaller group again. This is where the ornamental named patterns sit, Barleycorn among them, and ivory concentrates in the upper half of the range.

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Antique Chess

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Antique chess covers the pieces people played with and the boards they played on, made from the eighteenth century onward in turned wood, bone and ivory for the domestic table.