- Miniature Chrome Chess Table -
This miniature chess table with Regence style pieces is certainly 20th century and comes from China. I purchased it from Klackerking on eBay and I would recommend that seller as he replaced a pawn which arrived with a defective magnet. Magnetic pieces make this tiny set surprisingly practical. Additionally the drawers on the side of the board hold the pieces when not in use, a perfect scale model of a real chess table. It might be my new favorite travel set if the legs of the table folded up or something like that. As it is the table legs make it too bulky to be a good travel set, but it's certainly my most practical miniature. As far as the pieces go, the mold lines are a little annoying, but probably they bother me more than others as I am a caster and know they could have been gotten rid of if the pieces had been hand made. I do not feel this is a terribly high quality set, but I like it quite a bit. What is it about Miniature Asian Regence sets? Kings are slightly shorter than Queens just like little horn Regence set. There is some very interesting design variation in the kings as well, though. The Regency king signature is a floral crown. These floral crowns have been altered to resemble the rooks' parapets almost exactly, perhaps a more masculine twist on the normal French crown.
Chrome chess table... on top of another chess table.
Reflective white army.
The other side.
A position from the French McCutcheon line.
And one from the Winawer.
The other side.
I should start taking more of these presentation pictures of my sets. These pieces span a 1.5" chess square on my big chess table.
King, Queen, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Pawn (rather than the standard piece order) is a time honored presentation setup for French Regence style pieces.
It makes things even more confusing when the knight is non-figural, but here the knight is figural, and I like the look of the three orb finials every other piece 'queen, bishop, pawn,' against the other pieces as well as the gentle slope this order gives the pieces. The mold lines bother me most on these close-ups. Notice the interesting variation on the king's finial, though; it resembles the top of the rook. I may adopt this idea for more symmetrical signatures across the set if I ever make a Regence set; I like this variation.
A drawer full of chrome.
One chess table on another.