Library or Tournament Size Jaques Set?

I've recently purchased an 1856-59 Jaques chess set in a mahogany hinged box, and I'm having a hard time categorising the sizing of this set:

The King stands 3.4 inches tall, and has a base diameter of 1.6 inches (1 5/8 inches). Both of these fall shy of the often stated 3.5 inch tall/ 1.75 inch diameter base that is widely agreed to be the standard Jaques tournament size. 

I also can't seem to find any reference to Jaques sets with 1 5/8 inch King bases (Jaques categorised their sets using king base diameters in units of fractions of an inch, 1 3/8 for library sets, and 1 3/4 for tournament sets, etc.)

Alan Fersht's book 'Jaques and British Chess Company chess sets' also doesn't provide any information on Jaques 1 5/8 inch sets.

Can anyone shed some light on this? The difference in base diameter between this 1 5/8" set and the standard 1 3/4" seems too great a difference to allocate to simple variations in the carving.

Nice looking king great mystery.

More pics, PLEEEEEAAASE!!!!!

Maybe it was a 3.5" King, just shrunk due to age. That osteoporosis will get'cha.

More photos to come I promise, I'm just going to wait until I've received the chess board I've ordered before taking good quality images. Until then here's an image I took while trying to decide on the correct square size for this set:

According to the 75% king diameter to square ratio that has been discussed in other threads the correct square size would be 2.1 inches (1.6/0.75 = 2.1), however due to the slender profile of the major pieces and pawns, and the king's modest height of 3.4 inches, a 2 inch board seems to be the perfect fit.

What do you guys think?

First, absolutely beautiful set. 

Second, since I like a (very) slightly crowded board I would tend to go with the 2" board. I think the slenderness of the pieces does lend itself (grammar?) to the 2" square also. 

However, your top pic shows what looks like 4.2cm which is 1.65354 inches or rounded to 1.66 which give a 2.21" square size, or just slightly under a 2 1/4" square. 

Unfortunately it is tough for me to visualize in my mind. 

Thanks! These sets really are far more impressive when you see them in the 'flesh', the camera really doesn't do them justice.

In terms of the photo showing the king's base diameter i think you might be right, there certainly is a little parallax error occurring in the image but the base is without a doubt slightly larger than 1.6 inches, in fact I've just checked again and it's precisely 1 5/8 inches, which is exactly 1.625 inches. Well spotted.

Love the set.  It's a bit larger than my library size Jaques, which K measures 3 1/4.

@Rsava "lends"

@Impractical Is that measurement with or without the king's finial?

Also would you describe my set as a library or tournament size? Or neither? Perhaps our odd sets could be called 'library tour' size .

Btw would love to see some images of your set if possible!

I thought Jaques library sets had 2.75" Kings, including the finial. So they're really quite small, unweighted, and come in a slide top box

Gorgeous set. Library sets are smaller. I'd be quite comfortable calling this "tournament" size. Whatever floats your board with a board size, but I'd probably go with a 2" board.

Thanks, I'm currently in discussions with an antique dealer to purchase this 2 inch square mahogany framed satinwood and birchwood chess board from the same period as the Jaques pieces, although it's going to cost me almost as much as the set! 

Would still love to see any photos of your set if you have any  

A little update-

I managed to agree a good price with the antique dealer for the chess board in the picture above, and he even agreed to fly it from Hong Kong to London for me (he has dealerships in both cities) free of charge, so that saved a considerable amount on shipping. The price turned out to be exactly half what I paid for my 1855-60 Jaques set, so I'm very pleased, especially as these boards are unfortunately becoming extremely scarce in good condition.

Now to the board- it measures 45 x 45cm in total, and the squares are exactly 2 inches. The mahogany frame has a height of 3.5 cm, and is 2cm thick. Now that I've had a good look at it I believe the dark squares are rosewood, and not birchwood as I originally thought they were. One of my favourite aspects of this board are the dovetail mitred corners, which I haven't seen before on other chess boards of this type, and shows the effort and attention to detail that the original craftsman put into making it.

Since receiving it I've had the surface professionally 'refinished' by a very experienced antique restorer, which involves carefully removing the previous layer of french polish, and then re-polishing it. I'm very happy with the result, and it hasn't lost any of the beautiful aged colour of the inlaid squares:

Really, really nice board. I've been watching the auctions for a while and agree that good antique boards are scarce. I've also never seen one with corners like that

Closest thing I've seen has what looks like a single insert into each corner, whereas yours has two:

Is this your board? It's well made with a good bit of age too- I really love the older boards that have raised frames. I believe the inserts in mitred corners are called 'splines' (?), but I'm by no means an expert, perhaps Alan D might be able to confirm? 

I'd love to see Alan Fersht compile a book on the history and development of chess boards throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, or perhaps such a book would put too many people to sleep?

It's not mine, it's one I'm watching on eBay. All my larger boards are veneer crap, so I'd like a good antique board

Ok, I"ll be the guy to ask the tacky question.  How much does a beautiful set like that cost??

I'm not an antiques expert, but I have heard from those who purport to be that the one thing you should never do to an antique is refinish it, because it destroys its value.

In fact, why one would go to the trouble and expense of buying an antique only to turn around and refinish it; it makes no sense, if one is interested in owning it as an antique...

I understand your concern, and there are many different levels of 'refinishing' that one can do to a piece of antique wood furniture (or chess board), and in this case an extremely unintrusive form was used. Over time the varnish on a board like this can discolour, as well as having scratches that are only in the varnish itself, and not on the wood.

The expert I entrusted on this project only removed the old varnish, and did not alter the original surface of the wood in any way. A new layer of varnish was then applied to bring it back to life. It's a lot like when an oil painting has the old yellowing varnish removed, and a new layer applied, brining the painting back to life and restoring the colour of the original oil paint pigments. The same applies in this case too.

If anything the value of this board increased after the work had been carried out.