The Nicest Chess Sets: What Makes One Worth Displaying

Four things decide whether a chess set looks good, and price is not one of them. Proportion between the pieces, the ratio of the base to the square, the finish, and the contrast between the two colours. Get those right in moulded plastic and the set looks better than an expensive one that gets them wrong.

Proportion, and why the knight gives a set away

Every piece in a Staunton set is drawn from the same family of shapes: a round base, a collar, a tapering body, a distinct top. When the proportions are right, the six pieces read as one set from across a room. When they are not, one piece looks like it wandered in from somewhere else, and it is almost always the knight.

The knight is the only piece that is sculpted rather than turned. Everything else can be made on a lathe or moulded from a symmetrical tool. The knight has a face, a mane, a jaw and an eye, and every one of those is a decision. A cheap knight has a blunt muzzle, a mane that reads as a row of bumps and no eye. Look at the knight first on any set you are considering. It tells you what the maker was willing to spend. The pattern the proportions come from is covered in Staunton chess pieces explained.

The base to square ratio

This is the one almost nobody checks and it decides how a set looks more than any other single number. The base of the king should be about three quarters of the width of the square, and no more than 80 percent of it. Much wider and the pieces crowd each other, bases touch across a diagonal, and the position looks cluttered from the opening move. Much narrower and the pieces look marooned, like a set that came with the wrong board.

On a 2.25 inch square, a king base of about 1.7 to 1.8 inches sits in the right place. That is the difference between a board that photographs well and one that does not, and it costs nothing to get right.

Finish: matte beats gloss

High gloss looks expensive in a product photo and cheap in a room. Gloss picks out every mould line and parting seam, holds fingerprints, and throws a hard highlight that flattens the carving. Matte absorbs the light and lets the shape do the work, which is why almost every set that photographs beautifully is matte or satin.

The same is true of the board. A gloss board mirrors the ceiling light straight back at whoever is sitting opposite.

Contrast between the two colours

The pair has to be clearly two colours at a glance, in lamp light, from a metre away. Cream against black or ebonised black does this. Light brown against dark brown, which a lot of wooden sets use, does not, and after an hour of play it starts to cost you accuracy as well as looks.

Boards work the same way. Green and white, or black and white, both hold contrast under almost any lighting. A wooden board in two similar tones is lovely in daylight and murky at night.

What makes a set cool rather than just nice

Nice is proportion done properly. Cool is usually one deliberate departure: an oversized king, a very low wide base, a modern knight with a hard flat plane where the mane would be, a board in an unexpected colour. One departure reads as design. Three read as a novelty set.

The sets that get called the most beautiful in the world are almost always the opposite of novel: the classic 19th century Staunton patterns in ebony and boxwood, hand carved, with nothing invented at all. Both approaches work. What does not work is a set trying to do both at once.

What does not make a set look good

Theme. A set of dragons, generals or film characters is a lovely object and a poor chess set, because you cannot tell a bishop from a rook at a glance and neither can anyone you play. If you want one, buy it as a second set.

Glass. It looks superb empty and is close to unusable in play, because the pieces of both colours read as the same thing under any light.

Size for its own sake. A king over 4.5 inches on a standard board breaks the base to square ratio, and the set looks oversized rather than impressive.

What we make

Our pieces are modern Staunton in matte bone cream and matte black, with a carved knight rather than a moulded suggestion of one. The 4X has a 4.4 inch king on a 1.9 inch base; the 3X has a 4.0 inch king on a 1.8 inch base. Both sit on 2.25 inch squares, so the base to square ratio lands where it should.

The board is reversible: green and white on one face, black and white on the other, matte on both, with notation printed around the edge of each.

See both sets.

Common questions

What is the most beautiful chess set in the world?

There is no single answer, but the sets that consistently get named are hand carved Staunton patterns in ebony and boxwood from the 19th and early 20th century, and the Jaques sets the pattern was originally made for. They are beautiful because the proportions are the source everything else copies.

Are wooden chess sets nicer than plastic?

Wood has a warmth plastic does not, and grain makes every set slightly individual. But a badly proportioned wooden set looks worse than a well proportioned plastic one, and wood does nothing for contrast if both colours are brown.

What colour chess board looks best?

Green and cream, or black and cream, hold contrast under any light and are what tournaments use for exactly that reason. Wood in two clearly different tones works. Two similar browns, or anything glossy, does not.

Does a nice chess set play better?

No. The things that make a set look good and the things that make it play well overlap almost completely though, which is the useful part: correct proportions, matte finish and real contrast are all comfort features as well as looks.