Cleveland Public Library

The People's University

Chess by Design

The Special Collections Department of the Cleveland Public Library will have a temporary installation of several unique and creative chess sets created by students enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Arts Foundation Design course led by Professor Barbara Stanczak. The sets will be on display from March 30, 2009 to April 10, 2009. Click here to view creative chess sets created by Professor Stanczak's students.

In 2005, the Noguchi Museum in Long Island hosted The Imagery of Chess Revisited, a reprise of a significant exhibition, The Imagery of Chess, put on by Julian Levy in December of 1944.  Levy, himself an artist, helped to bring Surrealism to America, called upon many of leading artists of his day to contribute to the show.  Some of the most famous names of the period responded: Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Alexander Calder, and many more.  This was a competition held at a number of local art schools to make chess sets in the spirit of the 1944 show. The competition was originally open to several art schools, but in the end only Pratt and Parsons students participated.

In January 2009, Professor Barbara Stanczak of the Cleveland Institute of Art had her students visit the John G. White Collection of chess sets.  While teaching her Foundation Design course over the last several years, she has had her students research various chess sets and the history of the game in order to design their own chess sets for a class project.  They are required to create a set which includes 32 figures, a playing board, and a game storage piece.  

The objectives of the course are as follows:

 - Have fun and fantasy in designing unique chess figures
 - Become aware of the 3000 year history of a game
 - Explore new materials for versatile execution
 - Design figures within the restriction of "Theme and Variation"
 - Learn to work within a system of control and multiplication
 - Learn to construct a fitting container in an additive process
 - Solidify and reinforce proper wood working skills

Select titles that explore the art of chess sets can be view at the Library:

The imagery of chess revisited, edited by Larry List ; introduction by Ingrid Schaffner.

The illustrated guide to world chess sets, by Victor Keats; photographs by Daniel Keats and Adrian Pope.

The art of chess pieces, by Linder I. M.

Wooden chess sets you can make, by Diana Thompson.

Master pieces : the architecture of chess, by Gareth Williams.

Designing chess sets for the Zen of it, by Gene Zelazny.

The Art of Chess, an exhibit of artistic chess sets on display at Reykjavik Art Museum. (website)