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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Mammoth Ivory Chess Set - Redux

That $10,000 chess set carved out of mammoth ivory for $10,000 is back in the news - at a different website.

Checking out the photograph of the set, while certainly lovely, I don't think it's worth $10,000. I think the workmanship leaves something to be desired. For that kind of money, I would want the bases of the pieces to be of uniform height and depth but, even allowing for perspective and shadowing, you can see in the photograph that the bases of the white pieces (which are at the front of the photograph) are of differing heights and the base height also appears to vary on each individual piece from left side to right side (right side appears somewhat thicker, for instance, on the bases of the king, queen and particularly the knight). Perhaps the maker needs to check the calibrations on his lathe (or get a new one, more finely balanced).

1 comment:

  1. Hi, I've just read your comments about the bases of the 10K chess set. The bases are meant to be slightly different, the set is a copy of a famous makers set (Jaques) although the knight's head design isn't right, but as they are probably carved in India it is possible that the carvers there are using their own design for the knight's head.

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