Chess Piece Restoration

Removing the pads? Why, they looked like new! Oh, the nice colour scheme. They need to make their special scratches on the board! --But, you knew the story and decided to refelt, and beautiful life goes on. Keep them blue felts in a jar for me, will ya?

Ungewichtet,

Yes, material - a thin black fabric - was finished. It had lived its useful life. The visible portion of the pieces remains, and will continue to remain, intact.

I was using them last night and couldn’t shake the thought (given their well worn condition) of how many hands, eyes, brains had been entertained with them - and in what circumstances…. That’s the magic of old sets vs. new ones.

Thank you! I was fascinated by the red–orange gradient as well. It has so much going on that the set would be distracting for play, but I love it as a display set.

I think the photo below shows your knights! They definitely look more serpentine than the conventional ’50s Mordovian knights. The description of the photo is, “School sports day in the mountains (Chisinau, 1950)”.

Do you know from what year your set is?

No idea of the year - just a ‘what you see is what you get’ purchase…. Thanks for the image!

The color gradient is quite beautiful. When I get to my workshop in a couple of weeks, I will apply some finish to them (wax or Waterlox matte/satin varnish most likely). I am considering tinting the finish for the light pieces with a touch of Indian red, but will see.

I found a set just like yours on eBay yesterday, except with a light brown finish. It sold so unfortunately I can no longer get to the listing and save an image. Anyway, I don’t recall seeing a stamp, but the description said the set is from 1953, which is later than I expected. I wonder then if this design was made alongside the more conventional one, which started being produced in 1948.

As far as I know, the set below is one of the earliest designs, from 1948. But I’ve seen a few other designs attributed to the ’40s, so I don’t know which came first. It’s possible that there were several competing designs in 1948, and that by 1949 we mainly see the archetypal Mordovian knights because it was a more successful design. But if your set was still produced in 1953, maybe several different designs were still produced in lower numbers.

That’s just speaking of the designs that came from the Factory No. 5 of the Gulag (Dubravny Camp ). There were also several Mordovian variants that were produced in Obedovo (Obedovskie sets) and Semyonov (Semenovskie sets), as well as a mini variant by Sila and later by the Khalturin Factory.

I wish we had more information about the history of all these variants and how they connect. I would love to be able to make a flowchart that maps out the different designs. I might still do that based on the production years I found and the design evolutions I believe occurred, but it involved a lot of conjecture.

Nice idea about tinting the finish, by the way! I assume you mean tinting it in certain spots to achieve a more consistent result, or is your intention to make the whole set look a bit more vivid?

If I go with tint, it would be mixed into the varnish, so evenly coat the pieces. We’ll see.

This set is available on ebay - truly a set to refinish!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/396039817605?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=eeulrzb0ssw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=cwko7t2lsq6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Oh definitely! It will look amazing once refinished. The price is high though; you can get these in a much better state for less. It’s a '50s Red Combine tournament-sized set. I have a small variant in a relatively deteriorated state, but I love how it accentuates the contours.

Looking at so many pieces showing faded colors and impacts of time, they might feel like new when re-painted or polished a bit but I personally feel they look beautiful the way they are. However, some sort of repairs can be done to make sure they don't get damaged to a non-repairable extent.