It's endlessly fascinating how culture, religion and even language influence stylistic choices, even though Chess is a purely abstract game.
The obvious ones: in Western sets the king has a cross on top, and Islamic traditions only use abstract shapes. But I wonder if the "usual" designs aren't at least somewhat influenced by the English language specifically. Bishops have a stylized miter and Rooks are a tower with crenellations, but e.g. in Russian Bishop is "elephant" and Rook is "boat". Even in many other Western European languages "Bishop" as in the piece is not the same as bishop as in the religious office, e.g. "fou" in French, "alfil" in Spanish, "Laufer" in German.
The reason I hate chess is exactly the bishop symbol. I cannot explain it but I just can stand it. The idea on my mind of a bishop in war. I wish future generations will go back to the elephant as symbol internationally.
What feels more off to me is why does the king have a cross? And why does a religion use the murder weapon of its messiah as its main logo? What if He was killed by a rock or a rifle or a guillotine? What would the king be carrying on his head?
1. Because many ancient monarchs claimed they had divine backing as the basis of their right to rule. A ruler wearing religious symbols strengthens that association. Chess kings from non-christian countries don't have crosses but go with other symbolism.
2. Because the most famous miracle performed by Jesus is that the crucification didn't stick: he rose from the dead after a few days and ascended to heaven not much later. So the cross is not so much a murder weapon as a callback to the central promise of christianity: that believing will grant you eternal life in Heaven after you die. It should be noted that early christians didn't really use the cross as a symbol btw, that came much later.
Errr. Modern chess was not invented in India, but in ancient Persia. Afrasyab (the first pics on that site) is also the name of some character in Ferdowsi's Shah Nameh or Epic of the Kings (شاهنامه).
The name of the elephant (called FIL in Persian/Arabic) is not Indian (Indians call the elephant 'Haathi'). So is Vizier, a persian word (not queen!, it means something like minister or second in command after king).
In Russian, chess is called SHAKHMAT, but that is also derived from Persian: Shah means king, maat means defeat (this was somehow Anglified into checkmate).
The original word in Indian was chaturanga but that was a wholly different game-- a sort of predecessor. But so did the Chinese have a strategy board game which is also a far cry from chess as you know it now (and the Chinese "chess" still has remained the same as it was in ancient times).
The current, modern chess as you and I know it was invented in Saasaanid Persia, and the word used for it was SHATRANJ, as a sort of nod to Chaturanga, though the games are wildly different in every way except in intention (both are games of strategy).
According to Wikipedia: "During the Islamic Golden Age, many works on shatranj were written, recording for the first time the analysis of opening moves, game problems, the knight's tour, and many more subjects common in modern chess books. Many of these manuscripts are missing, but their content is known due to compilation work done by the later authors".
Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.
There's a mistake towards the end where an image of Rachel Whiteread's set is credited to Damien Hirst. Was this AI-built? If so then I'd worry about other errors.
If you Inspect the names of Whiteread's images, some of them have Hirst's name (hirst-chess2.jpg for example). I'm not sure about the AI part rather than it just being a mistake by a fatigued person maintaining a long list of things.
It took a while to find one, but the "Hermès Chess Set" has the board the wrong way round, with the white square bottom left. I like to call this "hollywood configuration" because of how often this happens in film & tv.
I definitely struggle at playing using artistic pieces. I had one set when I was a kid: it was so much more difficult to recognize patterns with its metal pieces: sometimes I even couldn't distinguish black from white.
But they were pretty as hell, and I absolutely loved it.
The obvious ones: in Western sets the king has a cross on top, and Islamic traditions only use abstract shapes. But I wonder if the "usual" designs aren't at least somewhat influenced by the English language specifically. Bishops have a stylized miter and Rooks are a tower with crenellations, but e.g. in Russian Bishop is "elephant" and Rook is "boat". Even in many other Western European languages "Bishop" as in the piece is not the same as bishop as in the religious office, e.g. "fou" in French, "alfil" in Spanish, "Laufer" in German.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(chess)#Name_translatio...
Something is __very__ off here ...
2. Because the most famous miracle performed by Jesus is that the crucification didn't stick: he rose from the dead after a few days and ascended to heaven not much later. So the cross is not so much a murder weapon as a callback to the central promise of christianity: that believing will grant you eternal life in Heaven after you die. It should be noted that early christians didn't really use the cross as a symbol btw, that came much later.
So he wasn't murdered but then still died? This makes it all much clearer :)
The name of the elephant (called FIL in Persian/Arabic) is not Indian (Indians call the elephant 'Haathi'). So is Vizier, a persian word (not queen!, it means something like minister or second in command after king).
In Russian, chess is called SHAKHMAT, but that is also derived from Persian: Shah means king, maat means defeat (this was somehow Anglified into checkmate).
The original word in Indian was chaturanga but that was a wholly different game-- a sort of predecessor. But so did the Chinese have a strategy board game which is also a far cry from chess as you know it now (and the Chinese "chess" still has remained the same as it was in ancient times).
The current, modern chess as you and I know it was invented in Saasaanid Persia, and the word used for it was SHATRANJ, as a sort of nod to Chaturanga, though the games are wildly different in every way except in intention (both are games of strategy).
According to Wikipedia: "During the Islamic Golden Age, many works on shatranj were written, recording for the first time the analysis of opening moves, game problems, the knight's tour, and many more subjects common in modern chess books. Many of these manuscripts are missing, but their content is known due to compilation work done by the later authors".
https://www.gokyaysatrancvakfi.org.tr/en/chess-museum/
Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.
I just like elephants so this is fantastic.
Every thing else is very pretty but feels a bit weird and off.
You can look at it but you wouldn’t want to play with it.
But they were pretty as hell, and I absolutely loved it.