What is it about House of Staunton Sets

There is quite a bit of discussion about the Chess sets The House of Staunton has made and sells.  I started buying their sets back in 1998 when Frank Camaratta was just getting the company going.  I got to know Frank pretty well as I would talk with him at least 4 times a year or more.  He would tell me of sets he was having produced and a number of specifics on each set including the set they were a reproduction of.

What some do not know is that Frank was an aeronautical engineer by trade, a real rocket scientist working for NASA.  He also is a Chess Master and an ANTD.  He also came to his business because he was a collector of antique chess sets, so much that he would attend their annual conventions all over the world.  He told me that he started The House of Staunton because there were no good quality Chess sets being made at the time.

Being an engineer Frank did his own research on the materials, especially Ebony, and the weighting and therefore balance of the Chess pieces.  He actually made a chamber to put the wood in to study its expansion and contraction due to humidity and other weather factors.  He designed the weighting systems of his nicer sets to have the weights not touch the wood so there could be expansion and contraction without the wood cracking.

Frank was very aware and proud of the fact that his sets were well balanced and "played" well because he was a Chess player himself first and foremost.

I was talking with a friend that is in the Chess equipment sales business and I asked him why Frank's sets were so different and better than others produced.  His response was that Frank went to India himself and contracted the companies to make his Chess sets with strict contracts drawn up under Indian law.  He had quality standards that had to be made by the company or he would not accept the sets and not pay for them.  When a new set was made, Frank would go to India to inspect the sets and if they didn't make his standard they would never be sent.  Also, if the production sets arrived in the USA and they didn't pass his quality standards they would be returned.

Frank sold The House of Staunton to Sean Sullivan about 10 years ago or so.  He still has his hand in product design and production, from what I understand.  I know that the Renegade set is a Frank Camaratta original design.  He also has al least one high end set with his name on it that he designed.

So, while there are imitations out there, they are just that and not duplicates.

Now, I must say that Chess Bazaar has some really nice looking sets at a more reasonable price.  They do appear to be copying at least some from the House of Staunton.  I noticed on their site yesterday that they are advertising the coming of a Liberty Series copy.  I recall when Frank was having this set produced.  He would describe it to me as the Pinney set from the 1930's, and did not come up the the name, Liberty, until after the first sets were produced.  In fact I know that I had the chance and bought one of the first two of those sets made in Rosewood, and that was before Frank started including the extra Queens.  I had to later buy the extra Queens.  Anyway, Chess Bazaar is now copying the copy.

I agree that a lot of their sets are priced too high.  I know that I myself bought a number of my sets, over the years, form their eBay auctions.  Of course those big discounts stopped on eBay quite awhile ago.

Some of their sets at or around the $100 mark, are really quite nice.  The Proline Series, for example is balanced and plays almost the same as the Marshall Series set which is easily 3 -4 times the cost.  The Classic Series 3.75" sets plays like the Players Series which used to be twice the cost.  The Championship Series is a copy of the set used on the DGT boards with weights instead of computer chips.  That set is really nice for its low cost.

I actually sold off my more expensive HOS sets, except for my one very nice Morphy Series set.  I now only have the lesser sets as they play just as well as the more expensive ones.  One thing that Frank told me years ago is that about half his cost in a set comes from the knights.  So it is apparent that the lesser expensive sets have knights that are not carved as finely as the more expensive ones.

Actually, it's not. It's a copy of an old BCC set:

I should add that I consider myself an admirer of what Frank did with HoS. I bought my first HoS set in 99, and am appreciative of the fact they single-handedly created a market for higher end sets and reproductions.

Nice piece of History on HOS.! Before HOS there was Lardy of France sets. These were the cats meow in the day. I never could afford one back then though. HOS did up the quality & I think was the first with 4 Queens.

I stand corrected on the Renegade set.  I remember Frank telling me of this set as if he was actually designing it.

Yes, Frank was the first to include the 4 Queens in his sets.

Today, I have kept the following as my sets:

1. Morphy Series 4.0" Blood Rosewood - This is a very nice, beefy set that I have with a Signature Traditional Board (2 3/8"") with the dyed green and Bird's Eye Maple.  This is my nice set that I play on 3 or 4 times a year when a friend might come over to play.

2. Zagreb '59 Rosewood - I have this paired with a green, leather roll up board from the House of Aragon.  It's my Barnes & Noble set that is a lot of fun to play with.  The only problem with this set is the base of the pawns are kind of small.  The House of Staunton has also really raised the price on this set, making it not worth the money for it, in my opinion.

3. Liberty Series Rosewood - This is my skittles/blitz set that I have with a silicone board.  This set wears like iron and plays extremely well.

4. Proline Series Rosewood - I kept this set because it is well balanced and I like the bevel on the bishops' mitres.  This is the one that plays the same as the more expensive Marshall Series set.  I'm not playing with this set much at all because of my Best Chessmen Ever set from Noj.  Also the crenelations on the Queens are pointed and could easily chip in storage, travel and play.  I have this set also with a folding Mahogany board from HOS and probably will keep it for awhile.

5. Classic Series 3.75" Rosewood - I like this set because it is a smaller set that plays well.  Like the Proline (and a lot of other HOS sets) the points on the Queens' crowns scare me with their chance of chipping.  My Dubrovnik II set is the same sizing and plays just as nicely. 

6. Just last week, I sold my Championship Series Rosewood set to a new guy in our club.  Last year I bought a couple of HOS plastic sets to take to the scholastic club I run.  The Collector Series 3.75" and Marshall (Both in natural for the light pieces) take the place of this set at our G/45 and G/30 events.

I looked at the HOS site earlier and see that they have one hundred twenty three wood chess sets for sale.  That's a lot, maybe too much.

That is certainly a lot of sets to offer. You would think offering about 20-30 sets would please most peoples wants & needs. Then again I don't sell chess sets for a living.

"Balance"? When making wooden Staunton type pieces, there are no significant options for balancing, because the rough design is a given (i.e., "Staunton"), so without adding any weights, they more or less all balance the same. When adding weights, there is only one good option: add the weights to the base only, which makes them bottom heavy, thus, more stable (harder to tip over). Everyone who makes or has ever made weighted Staunton type chess pieces does it this way (no one tries to make them middle heavy, or top heavy, which would be a joke). The only variable is with regard to just how bottom heavy you can make them. Limitations are in the form of how much usable space there is in the base (you have to limit the size of the hole you drill in the base in order to maintain sufficient wall thickness in the wood) and cost of the weighting material. If you want to spend a lot you could use e.g., tungsten, and drill the largest diameter hole you can without comprising the structure of the wood in the base.

Variances in humidity only cause expansion and contraction in unsealed wood. If the wood is sealed with e.g., varnish or some other type of waterproof finish, as most wooden chess pieces are, internal moisture content can't escape, and external moisture can't enter. The wood can still expand and contract due to temperature variances, but they would have to be extreme variances for it to be significant, such as putting them in the freezer or the oven. This is why when you make e.g., a tabletop, you want to apply a sealant type finish on both the top and bottom, even though no one sees the bottom side of it. This will prevent it from warping due to variances in humidity.

Seal the wood properly and there is no need for any special weighting system. Of course, over time, given enough use, the factory finish will wear off, but the owner of the pieces, or anything wooden that you want to keep nice, for that matter, should periodically do their own maintenance. An application of shoe polish every now and then to each piece would be fine. Shoe polish is wax-based, and wax is moisture proof. You could also use Turtle wax /carnauba wax, hardwood floor / furniture wax, or beeswax.

There is a noticeable difference in how some Chess pieces feel, and yes are balanced when playing with them.  Whether you want to say it is in the design of the piece or the weighting doesn't matter to me.

And the Sets that Frank Camaratta had made did play and feel better in the hand when playing.  I have had friends buy other manufactured sets, and I owned a couple myself.  The House of Staunton sets were and are better.  I distinctly remember when I got my Marshall Series 4.0" Rosewood set and a friend had just bought a similarly priced set from the Legend Chess company in the Northwest.  I was directing a tournament that my friend came to and had this set and a nice wooden board on Board #1 for the players to use.  Before people started showing up, my friend and I played a couple of quick games on my set and he remarked how much nicer my Marshall set was compared to the Ambassador set he just had bought.  Later, I had the chance to examine and more importantly play with that Legend set, and indeed the Marshall set felt and played better.  Yes, it was better balanced to play with.

Frank Camaratta told me that he made sure the weights in the set had a clearance from the wood.  He described the weight design he came up with as a dumbell shape.  Imagine the thinner part in the center allowing the wood to expand and contract without running into interference from the weight.

It is also a fact that Ebony does crack.  in 1991 I bought an Ebony set and within 2 years, at least 4 pieces developed cracks.  So, at least Ebony expands and contracts with either humidity or temperature or aome combination of things.  This is why I went to Rosewood for the dark pieces and lately have a couple of sets that use European Walnut.

Understand that I have no extreme loyalty to The House of Staunton or any other company.  I do respect and like Frank Camaratta for the quality he has produced in Chess Sets.  If those sets feel and play better than others, I don't really care why.  I simply bought them because they did.  In my experience the sets Frank has had produced play and look as good or better than many other brands at more expensive prices.  Even those he had made at or around the $100 price range are exceptional.

I buy and own Chess sets to play with.  I want the nicest feel or balance and looks in a Chess set possible for the cheapest price.  I have had a dealer complain about me when I tried to find a discount.  He said that I thought I was entitled.  If he would have said to me that this set was the best price possible, I probably would have paid the extra because the set was nice.  However, for what I could find elsewhere it was a bit overpriced.

I owned strictly wood sets until about a year ago when I bought a few nice plastic sets, over a period of 6 months or so, to bring to the school chess club I run.  I would bring a nice set as "my" set and the kids love it when I let them play on it.  Anyway, I bought some plastic sets from at least 4 retailers.  Well, the House of Staunton Collector Series 3.75" in Natural is the winner.  The set actually feels better in the hand when moving the pieces, and it's not just my imagination as others say so as well.  A friend that is a competitor to HOS told me that the Collector Set is so good because it comes from an encapsulated weighting where the weights are encapsulated by plastic.  He admitted to me that the Collector set is currently the nicest plastic one available on the market, and he doean't sell those.  He was producing the Ultimate Chess Set which was of the same design until his Chinese manufacturer suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth.  Regardless, the set plays nicer and outperforms the others of different brands and even the other HOS sets, because of balance...:)

With Staunton pattern chess pieces of a given size, the only difference in balance will be with regard to more or less bottom heavy, depending of course, upon how much weight is added to the base. The only reason to be concerned about balance in a chess piece is to make them more stable on the board, which means you simply want them to be as bottom heavy as possible. There's no delicate fine tuning here; a chess piece isn't a tennis racket or a golf club; you simply stuff as much weight as you can into the base, and that's automatically the "balance" you want, like so:

http://d1lalstwiwz2br.cloudfront.net/images_users/tiny_mce/andy277/phpbpyTbd.jpeg

Later, I had the chance to examine and more importantly play with that Legend set, and indeed the Marshall set felt and played better.  Yes, it was better balanced to play with.

Which means it was more bottom heavy (or less bottom heavy if that's what you prefer). The base is the only place anyone adds weight to chess pieces. It is not as if there is a weight embedded in the top of the piece somewhere, then another embedded somewhere in the middle, and another between the middle and top, 37 degrees offset from the one in the middle, and then another in the base, and so on. All the weight is added to the base. Staunton pieces are bottom heavy to begin with, by design, because the largest part of each piece is the base. But, just being wood, which is relatively low densitity, they aren't bottom heavy enough, so you stuff as much lead into the base as you can. Or, you can cheap out and use iron, which means "less bottom heavy" for a given amount of space to work with, and then most people won't like the "balance" as much. Or, you could go all out and use tungsten, which means "even more bottom heavy than lead" for a given amount of space to work with.

It is also a fact that Ebony does crack.  in 1991 I bought an Ebony set and within 2 years, at least 4 pieces developed cracks.  So, at least Ebony expands and contracts with either humidity or temperature or aome combination of things.  This is why I went to Rosewood for the dark pieces and lately have a couple of sets that use European Walnut.

The same thing can happen to ebony, boxwood, or any other wood, including with pieces that were never weighted at all. Two things have to happen to minimize the risk of cracking. First, the wood needs to be properly "seasoned" (a controlled drying process to a given level of moisture, usually ~12%) prior to making chess pieces out of them. If they are not properly seasoned, they can built up internal tension due to uneven drying, i.e., drier toward the outside than the inside, because drier wood contracts and wetter wood expands; when you have both going on in the same piece of wood, the drier parts are fighting the wetter parts, creating tension. If and when this tension releases, you have a crack.

The other thing which has to happen, is the wood needs to be properly sealed from moisture once the chess pieces are made, which I mentioned in my previous post. If areas were missed during the finishing process, or have worn off since the pieces were new, the wood can take on and release moisture (unevenly in the case of pieces only being partially sealed), which can cause cracking. Ebony is more vulnerable to this than many other types of wood because it is relatively brittle, thus more likely to crack under stress than e.g. boxwood. Using weights with reliefs in them may help if the wood wasn't properly seasoned or sealed, but otherwise it is irrelevant.

By the way, I've had ebony pieces from ChessBazaar for about 2 years now, no cracks. They were weighted with poured-in molten lead, which is about as tight of a weight-to-wood fit as you can get. That also means they made the most out of the available space for weighting, which means they are about as bottom heavy as you can get for the size of the pieces, without going to very expensive tungsten weights (which would cost a couple hundred dollars just for the weights alone).

A friend that is a competitor to HOS told me that the Collector Set is so good because it comes from an encapsulated weighting where the weights are encapsulated by plastic.

You mean the weights don't rattle around? Of course that would feel better than weights that have come loose. There is nothing else that "encapsulating" the weight in plastic could do to affect "feel". Speaking of which, poured in molten lead produces the same "encapsulated" effect in wood, yet HoS doesn't do that with their wood pieces.

Regardless, the set plays nicer and outperforms the others of different brands and even the other HOS sets, because of balance...:)

Again, balance with regard to Staunton pattern chess pieces is just a matter of more or less bottom heavy, and most people prefer "more bottom heavy", unless they are playing fast-paced games, in which case heavier pieces may become a hindrance.

IMO all online chess vendors are monopolies

theres like what 2 sites that people buy from?

That's not necessarily true. I have sets with less weight that are also less bottom heavy than other sets but I prefer them because their balance is better for faster play. I think you're trying to apply your values onto other people and that doesn't often work.

I don't think you read my entire post. I also said:

"Which means it was more bottom heavy (or less bottom heavy if that's what you prefer)."

And:

"Again, balance with regard to Staunton pattern chess pieces is just a matter of more or less bottom heavy, and most people prefer "more bottom heavy", unless they are playing fast-paced games, in which case heavier pieces may become a hindrance."

The point is: "balance" with regard to Staunton chess pieces doesn't refer to something precise like how people use lead tape on tennis rackets and golf clubs to get the exact balance they are looking for. Staunton chess pieces start out as "bottom heavy" even before any weight is added, and in most cases, especially cases of expensive, refined wooden sets, the only goal with regard to "balance" is to simply make them as bottom heavy as possible, because that makes them as stable as possible and gives them a solid feel/heft at the same time, which most people like.

Some people prefer lighter chess pieces (which are still bottom heavy, just less so than they could be) for a specific application, but "light" isn't a selling point with chess pieces like it is with e.g., bicycles, which makes it nice for people who want light pieces, because as a general rule, lighter pieces tend to also be cheaper pieces. That's because iron is cheaper than lead (and lead is cheaper than tungsten), less of any material is cheaper than more of said material, and using no weighting material at all is free, both in terms of material cost and labor.

Well, I can certainly agree to disagree with a few details of what you say.

You do not appear to be an expert in the fabrication or design of weighted Chess sets and neither am I.

All I know and care about is how a Chess set "feels" during play and looks.

For instance my favorite Chess set is the Noj Dubrovnik II while the one that feels and plays the best is the Best Chessmen Ever set I have from the same maker.  I like how the Dubrovnik II looks on the board and it does have a nice feel, including what I call balance.  The feel and Balance of the BCE set is the best, especially with the stainless steel bottoms on it.

Of course the HOS sets all have a very nice feel and heft to them for the very vast majority of players that I have come across.  If you say all sets are designed or balanced the same it's alright with me, even if many, including people that are in the "businness" disagree with you.

Then you are admittedly not qualified to determined who is or who isn't an "expert" on such things, which negates your sentence; not that this subject is even remotely complex enough for "expert" to even be a meaningful term here. To weight chess pieces you drill a hole in the base and fill it with a material which is denser than the wood. To ensure that the piece is as bottom heavy as possible, you want a short and wide weight, i.e., the shorter it is, the lower the center of gravity is, thus the pieces will be more stable on the board. The wider it is, the more weight you'll have for a given height of weighting material.

It is not at all difficult to come up with optimal weighting for a chess piece, because of the inherent limitations involved, i.e., you can't make the weight too wide, because then the hole you drill for it will be surrounded by a wall of wood which is too thin. For example, if your base is 1-1/2" diameter, you don't want to drill a 1-3/8" hole, because that would only leave a wall thickness of 1/16". So, a 1" hole would be about as big as you'd want, leaving a 1/4" wall thickness. You can't drill too deep, because the base tapers, and you'll run into a wall thickness issue, plus you want the weight to be short for a low center of gravity. So for a large king, you might get away with up to 1/2" of depth for your hole. Then you fill the hole with the densest material you can find, and when cost, density, and suitability for the job are all taken into account, for most people the best compromise is lead.

If you say all sets are designed or balanced the same it's alright with me, even if many, including people that are in the "businness" disagree with you.

I never suggested any such thing. All designs which can legitimately be called "Staunton pattern" will have similar balance characteristics in their unweighted form. The only way to get significantly different balance characteristics is to deviate significantly from the basic Staunton pattern. For example, if you made a 4" tall king with a 1/2" diameter base, it would have ridiculous balance characteristics, i.e., it would be top heavy and you could tip it over just by blowing on it. A Staunton king has a base diameter which is 40% - 50% of its height, so for a 4" king, that's a 1.6" to 2" diameter base. In unweighted form, a piece which has a larger base relative to its height will be more bottom heavy / stable than one with a smaller base relative to its height, thus it follows that the former can be made more bottom heavy through weighting than the latter, because there is more room to add weight. Also, a wider base-relative-to-height is inherently more stable as well.

Another thing which can be done is to bevel the bottom outer edge of the base, which effectively makes the base larger, i.e., the far edges of the base end up being a slightly farther distance from the bottom center of the base. If you took this concept to the extreme, you could make the base spherical or mostly spherical, and with a sufficient base diameter-to-height ratio and weight in the base, the piece simply couldn't be knocked over to stay, i.e., it would always pop right back up by itself, like one of those inflatable punching toys for kids.

Everything there is to know about balance and stability with regard to a chess piece should have been learned by anyone who paid attention in 5th grade science class, or in most cases, even through typical life experience.

By the way, the "Best Chessman Ever" have an inherent advantage in terms of desirable balance characteristics (e.g., "bottom heavy") over actual Staunton pattern pieces because they are inherently more bottom heavy to begin with (i.e., in their unweighted form). They don't have the collars and such that Staunton chess pieces have, adding weight toward the middle/top. Plus the maker uses all the available "tricks" (which aren't really tricks at all, but rather, elementary science), i.e., weighted base, beveled bottom edge, and a sufficiently large base diameter to height ratio.

Fascinating discussion! I've never thought about the weight distribution of chess pieces before. But I suspect you do not want to simply make them as bottom-heavy as possible. That might be optimal for stability, but I think it might make for some weird-feeling pieces to actually play with. (Consider some extreme cases where the weight is much heavier than the wood and try to imagine how it would feel.)

The weight distribution definitely must influence the feel of the pieces. (It should also depends on how/where you lift the pieces.) There should be plenty of room for experimentation here. 

It doesn't make for weird feeling pieces to actually play with, because of the inherent limitations of how heavy you can make them. Again, here's a picture of a Jaques of London (the inventors of Staunton chess pieces) pawn with a broken base, revealing the lead weight inside:

http://d1lalstwiwz2br.cloudfront.net/images_users/tiny_mce/andy277/phpbpyTbd.jpeg

As you can see, that lead weight couldn't be any bigger without compromising the strength of the surrounding wall of wood, thus the piece is as bottom heavy as possible given the use of lead as a weighting material. The only way to make them more bottom heavy than that is to use a weighting material which is significantly more dense than lead, which, practically speaking, means tungsten. The problem with tungsten is its price, i.e., about $20 for a preformed 3 oz. weight, whereas you can buy a whole 5 lb. bar of lead for about $12. Tungsten is among the densest elements on Earth (1.7 times denser than lead, about the same density as gold), and even using as much tungsten as you can practically fit in the base of a chess piece wouldn't be too heavy; it would be awesome in fact. It's too bad tungsten is so expensive (a lot cheaper than other elements of a similar or greater density though).

How would you know if you are getting a genuine HOS set on eBay?

One problem with House of Staunton is shipping costs for international buyers. Sometimes shipping is almost increases the cost by 50%.

Several times,I have added a chess set to the shopping cart,only to close the browser after looking at the shipping costs involved.

I don't know how Chessbazaar is pulling it off, maybe multiple warehouses, in different parts of the world.

Would love to see HoS cater to Global markets as well.

That’s not a picture of a Jaques pawn. It’s a picture of a pawn from a ‘probably an Ayres’ set.

I'll take your word for it. Jaques did it the same way though. The "balance" philosophy for chess pieces is barnyard basic, i.e., stuff as much weight as you can into the base.