Upright Set c.1840’s

This lovely boxwood set with some damage (king and queens’ finials missing) was purchased from Great Western Auctions Glasgow.  The set has a lovely patina which leads me to believe that it may be an early one.  The king is just over 3 inches high minus finial.  For some odd reason a rather important article called ‘The Mulready Experiment’ that was published in the Chess Collector by Charles Oppenheim seems to have been rather ignored for some reason – I don’t quite understand why. Nobody seems to want to discuss the importance of the 1840 date where Hallett offered chessmen for sale on envelopes called ‘The Edinburgh Men’, and there are surviving Edinburgh Men pieces in the famous Edinburgh Chess Club but these surviving pieces are not of the quality of top London makers.