entry Oct 2013
Of Chess Pieces & Boards
or, I'm not
familiar with the Benko gambit. ...I've never admitted that to anyone before...I'm so ashamed...
For some reason, friend
Warren mentioned the Lewis chessmen to me, a group of
12th-century chess pieces carved in walrus ivory. They
were discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer
Hebrides in Scotland. They represent one of the few
complete, surviving medieval chess sets—quite a find. He
mentioned this the other day, thus guaranteeing that I
would spend the rest of the day hunting for an answer to
the age-old question…"Hmmm, is there a typical
Neapolitan chess set, the way there are typical Neapolitan playing cards?"The answer is that I'm still not sure, although I discovered a few things along the wobbly way to uncertainty. I was never much of a chess-player. (I remember how upset I was when I learned that you couldn’t take the other player’s piece for not jumping! I was what they called a “wood-pusher”.) Part of the problem is that I'm not even sure what is meant by “chess set”—the pieces? the board? both together? At first I thought I had hit the jackpot. I searched for ‘Neapolitan chess sets’ and wound up with one zillion hits in just 1.7 seconds! Then I saw that the search engine (gotta take that baby in for a tune-up) had helpfully substituted ‘Napoleon’ for ‘Neapolitan’. (Spoiler alert: in none of the Napoleon Bonaparte chess sets that I looked at is He a pawn.)
Chess pieces are intriguing. They can be generic or themed. Generic are the ones where the two sides have the same pieces and differ only in color. Beyond the standard amorphous chess pieces that you know even if you don’t play, there is a glorious parade of such pieces available. The kings and queens, the bishops, knights, rooks and pawns may be based on Etruscan or medieval themes or on Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology; they may be Muppets, the Simpsons, Sumo wrestlers, characters from Harry Potter, the crew from Star Trek or countless other TV shows. There are pieces made from auto engine and computer parts, and insects in amber; there is even a set in which all the pieces are shot glasses filled with the intoxicant of choice and you are required to drink the contents of each piece you take! (On a related note, there is a marijuana chess set that describes itself as "totally awesome, dude." Whose move is it?) The list is really endless. Some of them may even be related to Naples or southern Italy if you take your history in big bites; for example, there is a set of figures based on Spartacus (said to have perished in the Castelcivita cave in Cilento) and one on the Hautevilles (the Normans, the first rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily, later known as the Kingdom of Naples).
The themed
pieces are more intense because the sides not only
have different colors but different figures, ones that
have been in real historical or even philosophical
opposition. There is an Angels vs. Demons chess set, and
there is one called Good & Evil in which Hitler is the
white king (what?!), but only because Martin Luther
King is the black king. (Get it? and he has Donatella
Versace —really— and Gandhi on his side,
so watch out, Adolf!). There's a Columbus set where Chris
is the king and Isabella his queen, and they are up
against the New World figures of king Montezuma and an
Inca Sun Virgin as queen. A Crusader set I saw pits
Richard the Lionheart against Saladin (that game is still
going on, I’m afraid). Historical battles have
sides and lend themselves well to transformation into
themed chess pieces: Waterloo, Gettysburg, Trafalgar,
Cullodin, Hastings, Lepanto,
Little Big Horn, Pearl Harbor, etc. They all have their
chess sets with appropriately themed combatants. Here is
where I found the only example of chess pieces relevant to
the modern history of Naples (photo, above, right). It was
called "Borboni vs. Savoia” (sic—but the correct
plural is Borbone, not Borboni.
Checkmate!) and is self-described as a set in “alabaster
and resin, hand-painted, representing the battle of the
Savoys against the Bourbons that led to the unity of
Italy.” The figures are vaguely identifiable as north
(Savoy) or south (Bourbon) by military uniforms or flags.
I did not find a set of Neapolitan pieces where Ferdinand IV was the king, Caroline the queen, both
protected by a whole Neapolitan row of scugnizzi as pawns. The
Maschio Angioino would make a
great pair of rooks, the votive
spires of Gesù Nuovo and S. Domenico Maggiore would
be worthy bishops. Maybe the "Russian Horses" at the
Royal Palace could be the knights, or, as I call them, the
"horsies." More research is needed. Chess pieces
can be made of almost anything from common wood to very
endangered and expensive red
coral. Truly luxurious sets can have ivory pieces on
one side and coral on the other. Naples was and remains a
center of Mediterranean coral and has produced such chess
pieces.Chess boards, themselves, seem secondary, but they, too, present a great variety. You will find intarsio (wood inlay) examples from Sorrento, one of the great centers of Italian woodworking. Also, both board and pieces may be made from stone —marble, natural stone, onyx. (Onyx, by the way, is a banded variety of chalcedony, itself a cryptocrystalline form of silica. Checkmate, again!) The chess board (a chess table, really) in the image at the top of the page is anything but secondary; it is one of the most remarkable boards ever produced in Naples. It is in the possession of the Filangieri collection and was a gift from the private collection formerly in the Villa Livia. The artisan is not identified, but it is a fine example from the 1700s. The circular shape was unusual at the time; normally, board games were played on a rectangular surface. The main surface is spectacular, displaying wood inlay with what is called “threaded veneer”—meaning that the thin slices of wood typically glued onto the core panel in the technique of intarsio have been threaded with metal, in this case, brass. The wood is mainly mahogany and the circular base of the main platform is polychrome marble and jasper. The table is 80 cm/31.5 inches high and 87 cm/34 inches in diameter. If you bring your simple department store plastic chess pieces to a game on this table, pal, you are what we call a real wood-pusher. From one wood-pusher to another.
to miscellaneous portal to top of this page
© 2002 - 2023