Building a Collector's Chess Set: Why Craftsmanship Matters
Exploring what makes a chess set worth collecting - and keeping - forever
Exploring what makes a chess set worth collecting — and keeping — forever.
Most chess sets are bought, used for a while, and eventually find their way to a shelf where they gather dust between the novels nobody has reread and the ornament someone brought back from a holiday. They are not bad objects. They are simply not objects anyone feels strongly about.
A collector's chess set is different. Not because it is more expensive, though it often is. Because it is something you would notice if it were gone.
That distinction — between an object that is present and an object that is felt — is where this article begins.
The board is the foundation. Treat it accordingly.
There is a tendency, when people think about luxury chess sets, to focus first on the pieces. The kings and queens, the bishops, the hand-turned knights. These are the visible craftsmanship, the things that draw the eye in photographs and showrooms.
But experienced collectors — and experienced makers — will tell you the same thing: the board is the foundation of everything. Get it wrong, and the finest pieces in the world will look diminished by comparison. Get it right, and even modest pieces acquire a presence they would not otherwise possess.
What makes a board right?
Material honesty. A board made from genuinely beautiful materials — real wood, real resin, natural stone — has a quality of surface that no printed or laminated alternative can replicate. You notice it when you touch it. You notice it when the light changes across it in the course of an afternoon. The material is not imitating something else; it simply is what it is, and that directness is part of what gives it presence.
Proportion. A chess board has 64 squares. The proportion of those squares relative to the pieces placed on them, relative to the border, relative to the overall dimensions of the board — these relationships are either correct or they are not. A well-proportioned board looks inevitable. A poorly proportioned one creates a vague unease that most people feel but struggle to articulate.
Flatness and finish. This sounds basic. It is not. Wood moves. Resin, if mixed or poured incorrectly, can bow, bubble, or cloud. A board made to collector standard is flat under any lighting condition, from any angle, with a surface finish that remains consistent across every square. Achieving this requires patience and skill in equal measure.
Weight and stability. A board that sits solidly on a surface — that does not shift when a piece is placed with any emphasis, that does not flex under the weight of hands leaning across it — communicates quality before a single piece has been moved. This is the kind of thing you notice only when it is absent.
Why resin and wood, specifically
There are many materials from which a chess board can be made. Marble. Leather. Glass. Lacquered MDF. Each has its advocates.
Resin and wood together occupy a particular position in this landscape — one that is, in our view, genuinely distinct from the alternatives.
Wood brings warmth, grain, and an organic variability that no manufactured material can replicate. Every piece of timber has its own character: the way the grain runs, the figuring in the surface, the slight variation in tone from one end to the other. Two boards made from nominally the same species of oak will not look identical, because no two trees ever did.
Resin brings depth, clarity, and the ability to do things wood alone cannot. A river of resin running through the centre of a board — or forming the entirety of the light squares, or pooling at the edges in a way that suggests water or stone — creates visual effects that are genuinely singular. The resin captures and refracts light differently at different times of day. Placed near a window in morning light, it looks different from the same board under an evening lamp. It rewards being looked at.
Together, the two materials create an object that is both grounded and luminous — substantial enough to feel permanent, alive enough to remain interesting.
This is not a combination you arrive at easily. Resin and wood expand and contract at different rates. Bonding them correctly, ensuring the finished board remains flat over years of temperature variation, requires a level of technical knowledge that goes considerably beyond enthusiasm.
The question of the pieces
Since we have established that the board comes first, we can address the pieces with the attention they deserve rather than the weight they are sometimes given prematurely.
A collector's chess set can incorporate pieces in one of several ways, and the right approach depends entirely on the board and the brief.
Commission the pieces alongside the board. For collectors who want an entirely unified object — one vision, one maker, one aesthetic — this is the most satisfying option. It also requires a maker with the range to work across both the board and the chessmen, which narrows the field considerably.
Commission the board for an existing set of pieces. Many serious collectors already own pieces they love — a Staunton set inherited from a grandparent, a set of hand-carved wooden pieces brought back from travel, something bought years ago at a price that felt extravagant at the time and now seems modest. A bespoke board, designed and made around those specific pieces, gives them the setting they deserve. The squares sized to the pieces. The colours chosen to complement them. The border proportioned to frame them correctly.
Design the board as the primary object, with pieces as companions. For collectors who think of the set primarily as something to display rather than primarily as something to play, the board can take precedence as an art object in its own right, with the pieces chosen to complement it rather than to anchor it.
None of these approaches is correct in the abstract. The right answer comes from understanding what the collector actually wants the set to do and to be.
Collectability versus playability: a false distinction
There is a version of this conversation that positions collectability and playability as opposing qualities — as though a set that is genuinely beautiful must be too precious to use, and a set that is genuinely playable must be too utilitarian to collect.
This is, with respect to those who hold it, a failure of imagination.
The finest chess sets in existence — those held by serious collectors, those commissioned for private libraries and game rooms and the studies of people who think carefully about what goes in them — are played on. Not constantly, perhaps. Not casually. But they are used, because a game board that is never played on has not fulfilled its purpose, and serious collectors understand purpose.
The qualities that make a board collectible — precision of proportion, quality of material, clarity of finish — are also precisely the qualities that make it wonderful to play on. The pieces move cleanly. The squares read clearly. The surface is stable and true. Good design and good function are the same thing, arrived at from different directions.
A chess set worth collecting is a chess set worth playing. If it is not both, it is probably neither.
Chess as a gift
It is worth addressing directly what a significant number of people reading this already know: that a bespoke chess set is one of the most compelling gifts available at the luxury level.
It is specific without being personal in the way that clothing or jewellery can feel intrusive. It is durable — not consumable, not fashionable, not subject to obsolescence. It communicates considered taste on the part of the giver without requiring the recipient to display it immediately or use it on a particular occasion. And it occupies a category — luxury games and leisure — where genuinely excellent options are, even now, surprisingly rare.
A bespoke commission gives the giver something that a shop purchase cannot: a story. The board was made for this person, to these dimensions, in these colours, with this brief. That story is told every time the recipient shows it to someone new, which — for a beautiful object placed in a well-used room — happens more often than you might expect.
The occasions that suit a commission of this kind are those that warrant an object rather than an experience: significant birthdays, retirements, milestone anniversaries, the opening of a new home or a new study. Moments where the gift should last as long as the occasion deserves to be remembered.
What a commission involves
A bespoke chess board commission at Kent & Vale begins, as all our work does, with a conversation. We talk about where the board will live, how it will be used, what pieces will accompany it, and what the finished object should feel like — not just look like.
From that conversation we develop a specific proposal: dimensions, materials, colour palette, finish, any personalisation (a family name, a date, an inlaid detail) that belongs in the brief. We make a small number of commissions at any one time, which means the piece you commission receives the kind of sustained attention that production-line work cannot.
Lead times vary by complexity, but a typical board commission runs to six to ten weeks from confirmed brief to delivery. The board arrives finished, flat, and ready — with a care note on maintenance and, where relevant, a felt base cut to size.
If you are considering a commission — for yourself or as a gift — the right place to begin is a conversation rather than a quote request. The brief shapes the piece, and the brief begins with understanding what you actually want.
Kent & Vale is a bespoke British atelier creating handmade resin and wood objects from our workshop in Kent, England. The Games Room collection covers bespoke game boards and leisure pieces made for play, display, and inheritance.