@mjeman. Never noticed the pieces in your avatar - super! I would like to find a set of the Marcel Duchamp design. I have seen it in 3D printed sets……. I missed one chance. I suppose it’ll resurface at some point. But that’s a rabbit hole in the pack rat empire. 🤓
To play, my tastes are pedestrian.
@lighthouse that communist workers set would check a lot of boxes for me. This really is madness (very little of it makes sense - but that’s missing the point, isn’t it?).
As for David Lynch, I didn’t realize he painted and made other visual art. Just ordered a used copy of a collection of his art, ‘Someone is in my house’. He fits just that vein of imagination that flourished in the first half of a century that was a very mad time.
Yes is the America Dream dead or do you have be sleep in order to believe it ? baudouin27
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all
David Lynch showed me what lays behind , The White picket fence of Americana .
At first i used to dislike the Dubrovnik chess set ,
Man this is ugly .
But then Mr Bobby liked it so why ?
So must be more to it, than meets the eye .
Yet he hated communist .
So my own study into why begins .
Outcome no repro holds up to a original Dubrovnik .
The price of one if you can find a original !
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all
This Madness of one + zero 
I hear you re: Dubrovnik. I’ve followed the threads here that discuss the various repros - very likely all I can/would afford. I’m still working on getting myself to bite on this design - not there yet, but the reasons you give are what keeps me looking from time to time. There are so many repros and so many people have them, that I don’t feel especially excited about getting one. An original would be a different story (but how likely is that?).
I have broken the bank just twice on chess pieces (and can’t afford to do it again anytime soon if ever): NOJ sets, the Fabiano and the BCE blitz Eastern Stage 1. Their workmanship and unique designs are art.
The ‘formalism’ of the Fabiano and minimalism of the BCE blitz Stage 1 have a special attraction for me. I suppose their ‘Dubrovnik’ would be the repro I’d purchase if I could get past my current objections…. Thank god, the cost will inoculate me, at least for now!
I had a good laugh when someone here wrote that the BCE knights look like ducks (true!) - the ‘eyebrows’ remind me of Groucho Marx. 😂
Your tastes are varied and interesting, @baudouin27. I cannot say that I would purchase many of the sets, though they are nice to look at in that, they differ substantially from the humdrum, plastic Staunton sets.
What I really admire, is your reconditioning of older boards that have had a "hard life." Good on you, keep it up!
Thank you for a bit of the art part of your journey! Interesting that the makers of four of the sets you mentioned are born within 12 years, Josef Hartwig (*1880)(chess pieces 1923), Marcel Duchamp (*1887)(chess pieces 1918), Man Ray (*1890)(chess pieces 1920), Max Ernst (*1891)(chess pieces 1944). I'd love to try to play with any of them. I'd expect the Bauhaus pieces to be least playable, for their redundant/explanatory character and the many cubes. Nice to give the ball to the queen. Is a placement of the bishop defined or recommended (flat or upright)? Only the knight piece is doing the trick, big wow. -I love the bounty of the Duchamp Staunton, the math, muses and seeds of Man Ray's ensemble, and the dancing pieces of Max Ernst.
It all comes down to beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find that sets are art and the game can consume you in collecting and play.🌝
As for David Lynch,
Interesting! I need to binge Twin Peaks apparently -
Thanks for the tip, Hermanjohnell
It may be just me, but when I visualize scenes from the Black Lodge the floor is always black and white squares, not a zig-zag pttern (and I´ve watched Twin Peaks more times than I care to admit). In season 2 there´s a chess game with Dale Cooper as one of the players.
edit. my mistake, the actual game is in a later eisode. I am myself going to watch the whole series one more tme especially looking for chess references/allusions. Lke the great philosopher Homer Simpson I admire the late great David Lynch.
After lost highway , I got lost too , Still my crush on Patricia Arquette grew ! hermanjohnell
The journey is akin to, but not exactly the same as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (unless we define other types of acquiring/collecting the same way). There is a strong appreciation of the chess set designs and craft that we babble on about endlessly…. Over time, my tastes have become more defined. Sets I’ve acquired - like the ones below (and many of the ones above) - I would not purchase now.
But the journey itself has been engaging (if not somewhat consuming). And though acquisitions have slowed and lost obsessive urgency, I’m still looking forward to the next one, whenever it may come.
The journey is akin to, but not exactly the same as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (unless we define other types of acquiring/collecting the same way). There is a strong appreciation of the chess set designs and craft that we babble on about endlessly…. Over time, my tastes have become more defined. Sets I’ve acquired - like the ones below (and many of the ones above) - I would not purchase now.
But the journey itself has been engaging (if not somewhat consuming). And though acquisitions have slowed and lost obsessive urgency, I’m still looking forward to the next one, whenever it may come.
Well said!
Seasons come and go, and chess set tastes go along with them. Lately, I’ve been enjoying Sándor Biró’s set, appreciating it more with each game.
There are others that always stay near the top of the rotation, but they have a ‘stocky’ traditional Staunton feel to them - as opposed to pre-Staunton designs and some of the Soviet-influenced designs…
I’ve enjoyed reading Powder’s ‘Top 10’ rankings (for his own taste for a moment in time) describing the characteristics of each set that attract him. That takes a lot of effort!
When you fall into this ‘gentle madness’ of purchasing chess sets, what are the motivations? How do we justify the irrepressible urge for ‘just one more set’ (‘then I’m done - I really mean it this time! baudouin27
In the end you buy what you like ,
Sure , it's that set if only , Look at that shape / that knight if only, then the history the wood , it can go on .
Now for me it's the chessnut move , why because it's the close's thing i can get to HAL after all these years . A chess set that move's by it self . WOW
600 euros is a lot to payout, with not knowing what one will get back + what the future holds in this tech driven world ? So I have decide to get a refund & stick to what i do like , Not fads or trends + getting stuck for parts down the Years + not been so keen on AI etc . But did like Hal back in 2001 . Was Stanley telling me something or Just warning me about AI even back then as a young Man . Did not deep blue cheat to ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole_versus_HAL_9000
Very nice and interesting wiki-entry!
2001 is the uncanny movie number one for me. Giving rise to unfond memories 
But I love the side note on polyominoes: Photo of a board game (just saved from an offer on ebay). Was it really released in 1967, before the movie? 
Very nice. Deep Blue was not an AI, right? Kasparov once said 'For me, it was not the first match a world champion lost to a computer, it was the first match I ever lost'. Maybe that's why he suspected team Deep Blue.
I must make an entry in pac-man chess tetris. At the latest, when an unused arcade game scene from 2001 appears.
ungewichtet Yes has to be one of the most abstract way out there films in it's time , With no CGI. Still get me thinking after all theses years .
Anyway, those sets speak from an era with an especially dynamic and engaged cultural world - seems very distant from ours (though events eerily similar). baudouin27
Yes like dark film / film Noir / born out of Berlin & look what came after .
Now in the lost age of Nero Noir .
Always wanted , A real Man ray chess set heck even a real photograph or painting by him would do !
Still way outside my reach .
But i do have Socialist worker's chess set / A original Dubrovnik ,
After this buy , i just have to say NO NO NO NO NO , This is Madness .
AM i poor or rich or need help ?
My last buy into this Madness of chess design .
Or a Mise-en-scène into Nero Noir ? For David Lynch Thank you .