In his recent book, On The Collecting Of Chess Sets, Holger Langer identifies six organizing principles for a chess set collection. According to Holger, one can organize a collection by:
▪ a type or style of set, Staunton pattern sets being the most common;
▪ the materials used – wooden sets, ivory sets, or plastic sets, for example;
▪ the maker or makers – Jaques, British Chess Company, or Calvert among them;
▪ geography – American, British, French, Eastern European, or Soviet sets;
▪ time period – seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century sets; and
▪ specialized sets or equipment – travel sets, sets for the blind, chess clocks, and so on.
How collectors embrace these principles is highly idiosyncratic. My own collection is a good example. In this column,…
