Aluminium Turned Chess Set

This neat looking set was offered on Ebay some months ago with a very tempting Buy It Now price.

So after a few views it became an impulse buy grabbed quickly!

I have looked at Ebay listings since 2004 and have only missed about 60-70 days for viewing (due to illness), so I am talking about 20 YEARS of searching,

auction catalogues included!

I cannot ever recall seeing such a set in turned metal – well made, interesting, and it appears that the maker knew

something about 19th century English chess sets.

When received I was delighted, and it has become a ‘keeper’ set-the very idea of selling it on is a big ‘no no’ .

I then contacted the seller for the maximum information possible on this cute set and received the below most useful reply, which pretty much summed up my original

thoughts:-

‘Hi Guy, this is an interesting question..I remember many years ago a couple of engineers I was working with talked about a chess set made by friends they new in aluminium, before cnc machining, very few were produced as they were very time consuming and prohibitively expensive. If these are a set, you have a scarce item, I don’t know more, they are not modern, I think 1970s to 1990s. I think there is a good chance these are a UK set.’

With a King height of 5cms, it appears to be that the pieces were influenced by 19th century English bone sets, not

Barleycorn of course.