- Jonchets Pin Set -

Here is a camel bone pin set made in India, c. 1960. The origin of this sort of set is a fairy tale which has become somewhat of a dark spot in chess collecting history. Personally I think it's a funny story, but then I got this set on the cheap.  Had I spent more for an "authentic" pique-sable set, I may not be laughing. For a large portion of the 20th century it was believed that 18th century French bone pin chess sets existed, that they were carved in Dieppe, France, and used to play chess in the sand or in chess boards made of cushion for travel. According to Alan Dewey this idea appears to have originated with Hammond who was friend with Mackett-Beeson, and that explains the publication of this idea in Beeson's chess collector book. The story was published and republished. The stick men these authors and collectors were looking at were much more likely "Jonchets," pieces for the game of Spillikins, or Pickup-Sticks. You hold the men, point down, on a surface, drop them in a pile, at attempt to pick one from the group with a hooked stick without disturbing the others. You get a different point value depending which piece you are able to pick. With Mackett-Beeson and others mistaking these children's game pieces for chessmen you had a generation of collectors who wanted a set... yet the Spillikin sets were not thirty-two pieces, more like six or eight. The excuse for this is that these 18th century chessmen were so rare no complete sets still existed. Chess restorer Bertram Jones got into the act creating his own French Pique-Sable sets either by collecting many sets of Jonchets and carving the odd left over piece to match, or carving every piece from scratch. It's unclear to me how misleading Jones was in this behavior... he was asked by many to make pieces complete sets (since only four or five pieces were found at a time,) and I have heard he had his own sets mixed in with real antiques in his shop and didn't say in particular they weren't new... that collectors just assumed. Usually these pique sable sets features crowned kings and queens, the bishop wore a Napoleonic hat, the rooks were towers, and the pawns were furled flags or simple sticks. My set comes from India and was based on these fake sets. It is therefore an odd thing. Alan wants to tell me it's fake, or it's not a chess set.  It's certainly not a set of Jonchets, though. Of course you could play Jonchets with it if you had the grabbing sticks, but it was made with all thirty-two pieces and no grabbing stick for the game of chess. It's a replica of fake, though, or a replica of a story that became legend and proved false as so many legends do. I like to think of the fairy story in this innocent, fanciful way, like in some far off 'once upon a time' Napoleonic French play chess in pearl white sands with stick pieces like these. It's a much nicer image than "these chessmen were created and lied about to swindle rich collectors out of their money," although that way to tell the story is likely just as true. Here is my pin set knights 2-1/2" (figure only.) Kings are not the tallest piece.

Stick men for Jonchets or "pique-sable" chess.

Kings are oddly Napoleon (in Jones' and others' sand sets, that figure would have been the bishop.) Queens have Crowns.  Pawns have crowns as well... this makes them "little queens" waiting to be promoted like so many early chess sets, but crowned pawns are incredibly odd... sort of post French Revolution... power to the people or something. Knights are horses. When I took these pictures I overthought things; I figured in a lot of French sets Queens, Bishops, and Pawns share the same top, so I set them up like the other crowned piece was the Bishop. Now I look at them and think that crown looks a lot like a tower top and the other odd man out's hat looks a bit more like a Bishop. Anyway piece signatures are somewhat unclear. When you crown the pawn anything can happen I suppose. Certainly I can't finish these photographs inside on the chess board... lets take a trip outside.

Sand chess? Maybe on some distant French beach. *This* is how we play pique-sable chess in Wisconsin!

A position from the French Defense chess opening... come to think of it maybe I should have used ond of the Indian Defenses.

"Black" pieces are colored in green and orange, a common practice when making chess sets out of real French Spillikins, which are, of course all the same color.

White pieces glisten in the sunlight.

No Napoleon short jokes now!

Shadows on the snow.

Figural Sets

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