The House of Staunton is proud to offer the Atlas Series Chess set. A full club-sized Chess set, it features a 4.4" King with a 1.7" diameter base. The Chess pieces are hand carved by our master artisans and crafted out of the highest grade woods.
The House of Staunton is proud to offer the Grossmeister Series Chess set. A full club-sized Chess set, it features a 4.4" King with a 1.7" diameter base. The Chess pieces are hand carved by our master artisans and crafted out of the highest grade woods. The Chess pieces are heavily weighted with luxurious billiard cloth base pads and a beautiful finish. The form, board presence and exquisite craftsmanship of these magnificent chessmen have been recaptured and are offered to you.
As with all of our Chess sets, the Grossmeister Series exemplifies a perfect combination of distinct beauty and functionality. It has been designed to withstand the rigors of practical play while maintaining an elegance which has become the hallmark of a House of Staunton chess set. The design, quality and craftsmanship of this set is UNMATCHED by any set of Chessmen in its price range. Nothing even comes close!
The Chessmen are new and each set consists of 34 Chessmen, including four Queens, a standard that was introduced by The House of Staunton in 1993.
Product Specifications
More Information
ISBN
Does not apply
Chess Board Included?
The Chess Board featured is for photographic purposes only and must be purchased separately
Material(s)
Anjan, Blood Rosewood, Ebonized Boxwood, Genuine Ebony, Golden Rosewood, Indian Rosewood, Natural Boxwood, Padauk
Fitted Coffer Compatible?
Fits in Fitted Coffer
King Height
4.4'' inch / 11.18 cm
King Base Diameter
1.7'' inch / 4.32 cm
Recommended Chess Board Size
2.5" inch / 6.4 cm
Basepad Material
Billiard Cloth
Median Set Weight
60.8 ounces (1.72 kg)
Total Number of Pieces
34 Chess Pieces, including 2 Additional Queens (for Pawn Promotion)
History of the Chess Pieces
Used for decades at the highest levels of Soviet Chess, the Grossmeister chessmen, sometimes called Grandmaster or GM pieces, are perhaps the most iconic Soviet chessmen of all time. Every Soviet world champion played with them—Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov. Often were they used for Soviet Championships.
The earliest models appeared in the fifties. They are characterized by superior workmanship, wooden finials and kings' crosses, boldly pointed queens' coronets, slotted bishops' miters, strongly crenelated rooks, robust pawns, and all wooden knights. The crosses and slotted bishops' miters were unusual for Soviet chessmen, which typically avoided religious symbolism.
Over time, the Grossmeister went through many iterations and began to be mass produced for the chess-playing masses. Sadly, workmanship declined. At first, the wooden heads of the black knights were replaced with plastic ones, the finishing degraded, as did the turning of the collars, the carvings of the knights, and the shape and depth of the cuts in the bishops' miters. By the eighties, wooden finials and crosses were replaced with plastic ones, the points on the queens' coronets disappeared, the knights' heads were all molded from plastic, and the rooks lost their crenelations.
We are proud to reproduce one of the earliest versions of this historic set.
Botvinnik-Bronstein, 1951 World Championship
Botvinnik-Smyslov, 1954 World Championship
Tal-Yusopov
Petrosian
Kasparov
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