The 8 chicest chess sets

McQueen’s spring/summer 2005 It’s Only a Game collection

STEPHANE CARDINALE/GETTY IMAGES

Of course, the lockdown hit The Queen’s Gambit created a craze for the game, no doubt turbocharged by our desire in confinement to interact with others and the possibility of competition on phone and computer. That’s not to say it hadn’t been regularly mined by the cool and groovy prior to this — from McQueen’s spring/summer 2005 It’s Only a Game collection to Dior’s spring/summer 2018 chess-themed collection at the Musée Rodin.

Ralph Lauren’s Fowler Chess and Draughts Game Gift Set

But today chess is finding expression through designer sets that make the perfect chic domestic accessory. Cartier has the Santos de Cartier Chess Set with pieces that are a modern metal take on the traditional Staunton designs, while Ralph Lauren Home has the minimalist Fowler Chess and Draughts Game Gift Set with pieces in gold-plated brass and polished nickel. For the tasteful traveller, Smythson has a Panama leather board that rolls up for transport and has clever zip-up cylinders at either end to contain its classic wooden pieces.

Smythson’s Panama leather board

Now Dunhill, the British purveyor of elegant luxury goods, has made a £9,000 modernist chess set with smart geometric pieces in black and silver stainless steel on a black and brown leather marquetry checked board.

Dunhill’s modernist chess set

The Dunhill set (which comes with additional counters so it can be used for draughts) is an interesting move from the label, which has its roots in Alfred Dunhill’s store that kitted out the early motorists with accessories for their vehicles and then clothes to wear while driving. Having evolved into a tailor and maker of elegant clothing and accessories, the time is right, says its creative director, Simon Holloway, to equip Dunhill man with pieces of what he calls “hard luxury”: desk gadgets, pens and games.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall playing chess c 1955

GETTY IMAGES

This, he explains, links back to the firm’s early years — it was founded in 1893 — and its tradition of engineering. “Last century Dunhill was known for its accessories, including its famous Rollagas lighter, the first to use butane instead of a wick, with its distinctive metal patterns.” Today you’ll find the fluting design that featured on that lighter all over the Dunhill collection, on leather goods and metal hardware — buckles on bags, for example — as Holloway makes use of this design code of the house.

You’ll also see it on the Dunhill metal chess pieces, making them easy to grip. But why a chess set? “We’re going to be doing a number of games,” Holloway says, “and chess seemed like the obvious one to start with.”

A look at past Dunhill advertising campaigns and the plot thickens. Back in 2009 Jude Law was the face of Dunhill, wearing the summer collection in a number of scenarios featuring a beach buggy. The actor had previously posed with a glider for the brand. And in the 2009 images he’s also pictured with … a chess set.

Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen famously played chess in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

ALAMY

The cineastes among you might have already worked out that this all references a film in which a famous chess game takes place. No, not The Seventh Seal, in which Death plays against a knight on a bleak Swedish beach, but The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968, where Steve McQueen as the playboy bank robber Thomas Crown is being pursued by Faye Dunaway’s investigator. Cue a memorable fireside duel of wits over a board. McQueen: “Do you play?” Dunaway: “Try me.” There then follows five minutes of play without dialogue accompanied by a musical score. Chess as metaphor for seduction.

Dunhill obviously used the film and the Thomas Crown character, who is always immaculately dressed in either tailored suits or what today we would call luxury casualwear, as its inspiration for Law’s turn for the brand. Crown loves his toys — which include both a beach buggy and a glider — and his chess set is in what is known as the “Burmese” pattern, with ornately sculpted pieces. The design turns out not to have been from Burma, as was widely thought, hence the name, but from Canton. But we can agree that it is pretty exquisite — exactly the sort of thing a millionaire businessman with a penchant for sports (he’s a polo player, after all) might have at home.

L’Objet’s Haas Brothers chess set

If you want a modern day decorative chess set, check out L’Objet’s Haas Brothers version with chunky stone board and brass figures based on characters from mythology. Brass is more palatable today than the ivory of the Thomas Crown set.

The Dave C Reynolds handmade surfer chess set

While there is nothing at all wrong with the classic Staunton design for chess pieces — the style favoured by Fide, the governing body of chess — you may want to go for something a bit different. There are many impressive sets available today, some more “novelty” than others. The handmade surfer sets by the Californian Dave C Reynolds are among my favourites — but if you want to impress with your design credentials, consider the simple Bauhaus interpretation, where the wooden pieces express the way in which they move through their design. The Skyline series are also conversation pieces. Created by the architects Chris Prosser and Ian Flood, here famous buildings are modelled as pieces in bronze, stainless steel or acrylic and come with boards often featuring city maps to celebrate among others the metropolises of London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Istanbul. You can even get Skyline sets where cities face off against each other. Personally I’d like to see a north v south London edition, pitting the Shard against St Paul’s.