Polish Tournament Chess Set, ca. 1890-1900

Polish Tournament Chess Set, ca. 1890-1900

Some time ago, I acquired some nice, but really worn pieces that once formed a glorious Polish late 19th century tournament set in order to restore them. King size is 9 cm. All pieces are weighted. However, many of the pieces had chips, an immense amount of grease and dirt on them and many spots in which the colour was peeling off. Half of the pieces had bone finials, the rest of the finials was missing. The finials of the black pieces were of natural colour that had in some places turned to a dirty grey. The finials on the white side were stained in red, but were rather faded. Further, one of the Rook finials had been misplaced on a Bishop. One pawn is a replacement.

The pieces were sold to me as being of Russian origin. I know of a similar set which was sold to Brazil, also as a Russian set. Further, an almost identical set is on display in the Chess Museum in Moscow, a picture of their website is included. You can see that the set is also in a rather rugged condition. A fellow chess collector recently made me aware of the fact that this set is not Russian, as I was assuming, but that it is a Polish set. He sent me pictures taken from a 1994 exhibition catalogue of the Moscow Chess Museum and was so kind to give me the permission to put them on this website.

I started the restoration by cleaning the wooden parts from the dirt and stains, while keeping the patina. Obviously I could not do the restoration of the missing bone finials myself, so I sent the pieces to Jürgen Schott, who is one of the famous Odenwald ivory carvers. I sincerely recommend him for any works you require in bone, ivory or the like - he truly is a great craftsman and artist! He made replacements for the missing bone finials, cleaned the natural bone parts and re-coloured the stained red ones. I finished the entire restoration with the renewal of the finish on the wooden parts. The result can be seen in the pictures below.

The only piece I was unable to restore was the crown of the white Queen, which is so damaged that you would need to replace the entire head, which is going too far for my taste. I rather keep it as it is.
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