Cool Vintage Chess Photos

This is the place to post cool vintage chess photos. All photos MUST HAVE the following:

• A clearly visible chess set
• The chess set must look desirable - i.e., the patina of time is visible

This is NOT the place for disgusting chess pieces treated terribly! This is NOT the place for old photos of chess players!

We want to see great antiques. I'll start:

Yeah just like that one!

To follow up on the very first picture in this thread. These so called Lasker-Schlechter sets (named after the championship tournament between Lasker and Schlechter in 1910) were made in Austria in the first quarter of the 20th century and came with different types of knights. The one below is a post-WWI type of knight.

And here is another picture from the tournament.

The second picture in this thread is taken from my book. It is a Bohemian or early Czech chess set with very unique knights. Here is another picture of the full set.

Bernhard Kagan and José Raul Capablanca with a German "Onion Top" chess set together with pictures of various specimen from my collection.

A Picture of a chess game during the American Civil War from the Matthew Brady Collection in the National Archives. The pieces seem to be of the Barleycorn type. It is not quite clear, who is the player shown on the left. According to the National Archive, this is believed to be Colonel James P. McMahon playing chess during a family visit at the headquarters of 164th New York Infantry. According to “The Photographic History of The Civil War in Ten Volumes”, edited by Francis Trevelyan Miller and Robert Sampson Lanier, Harvard University 1911, this is not James McMahon, but Colonel (later Major General) Martin T. McMahon, assistant adjutant-general of the Army of the Potomac's Sixth Corps. Yet another source, however, claims that it is General James H. Wilson.

A chess set described by the Chess Museum in Moscow as a late 19th century Polish chess set. The same type of chess set was used by Leo Tolstoy and is exhibited in his former house (now a museum).

The chess set shown in #3 above is identical to the one used in the 1936 Podebrady Tournament. Unfortunately, I could not locate a picture of the tournament showing these chessmen, even though I am sure I have one hidden in the depths of my computer. Here is another picture of this type of set.

These pictures are unbelievable, thank you so much for sharing

Here is another chess set from a 1936 chess tournament, in this case from the 1936 Munich Olympiad organised by the Nazis. For the tournament a then newly designed set called "Bundesform" was used. It was allegedly designed by Erhard Post (even though there is no proof other than Post - a wholehearted Nazi and mainly responsible for expelling Jewish players from German chess clubs just two years earlier - repeatedly claiming to be the designer) and introduced in 1935 to get rid of the foreign Staunton design. The set is shown here together with one of the chess clocks especially made by Paul Posingis for the 1936 tournament. These clocks are super rare - in fact, my clock is currently the only one I know of, even though it is rather likely that more specimen survived.

Here is another picture with a Bundesform chess set, this time post WWII, i.e. 1947. The picture is showing Georg Kieninger with Bundesform chess pieces and a different type of Posingis chess clock with pushbar mechanism.

Capablanca playing with a Vienna Coffee House chess set in the International Chess Tournament held in 1937 at the Grand Hotel Panhans in Semmering.

Last pictures for today, something entirely different: Smyslow playing with a German Fuerstenberg biscuit porcelain chess set on the occasion of the 1968 Lugano Chess Olympiad. It is not possible to see this on the b/w picture, but the chess pieces are coloured creamy white and celadon green. The king is Duke Carl I of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel, who founded the manufactory in 1747 in his old hunting lodge on the Weser river, where it is still located today. His wife Philippine Charlotte, sister of Frederick II, also known as Frederick the Great, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, is the queen. The bishop depicts the Chief Master of Hunting, Johann Georg von Langen, who was in charge of the factory and produced the first porcelain in Fuerstenberg between 1747 and 1753.

Noting Holger’s contributions above, his book is a wonderful reference and is highly recommended. On Collecting ….

@Powderdigit - Thank you, Mark!!!

@felonet … you asked but these aren’t really photos of great antiques and I’m not sure such pieces have ever been used in official tournament combat. Alas, I present my Lardy and Dogface pieces on a board I reconditioned. A tad embarrassed to post this given the quality of real antiques curated by other members of this forum but here they are.

I like the wear on the dark pieces!