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The "Biedermeier"style chessmen of Austria are named after the period of political quiescence and retreat into family life in Austria and Germany after the convulsions of the napoleonic wars, typified by a philistine Mister "Meier" being "bieder" (proper). While it is agreed that these chessmen started to come into use around 1800, it is by no means clear when exactly, who made them, and how did the specific pattern arise. According to Thomas Thomsen (1) they were preceded in public use - coffeehouses and publicans - by the older and more fragile "toy sets" from the Erzgebirge carvers,  which used to be sold all over Central Europe along with the popular Erzgebirge toys. 

Biedermeier sets started out as fairly complicated composite objects, and became gradually simpler over time (bishops hats!) until their manufacture seems to have ceased around the  mid-century, due to the growing shift to coffeehouse Old Austrian style pieces. The present show exhibits a few sets, discusses their features, juxtaposes similar and diverse pieces, and poses various questions and theses.....

The unmistakeable form of the chess piece form identified generally as Biedermeier - more about this label later -  has precedents in chessmen prevalent in the 18th Century and even much farther back. We find that queen, king, pawns in Damiano's early 15th C manual already have several concentric rings with triangular points on them, symbolizing crowns, we find these rings also among early italian chessmen, we find them in the pieces in the famous copper print by the artist signing BR from 1480 (the emperor playiing chess with death) , we certainly find them in the pieces depicted in the famous centerpiece print showing Gustavus Selenus (Augustus Duke of Brunswick) playing chess.

A very good italian 18th C chess set can be seen on Andreas Witticke's site here
 - another one on Kristjan Sander's site

http://anonymouschesscollector.blogspot.com/

On the last site compare also some of the fascinating 18th C sets exposed there - and their crown/collar/bird's nest rings.

 And from there on, a steady ongoing tradition of chessmen which may be summed up as in the SELENUS tradition. This is one of the main strains of chessmen - turned chessmen made in serial production for actually playing - as opposed to carved or opulently decorated chessmen for enlarging the collections of royal or ducal collectors, as one-off miracles of applied handicraft in the tradtion of the "Wunderkammer" (chamber of marvels, art and craft collection).

The main features of Biedermeier chessmen - concentric crowns or "birds nest" on queens and kings - are constantly found in turned chessmen - especially in central and northern Europe - from the early 17th C onwards (2). The rooks as well - a roofed turret or pavillon on a stem, the typically despondent  horse heads on knights,  and the wide and flat bases for better stability. Some of these features - stacked crowns - can be found elsewhere as well, as a british set proves which Gareth Williams presents in his book "Master Pieces" (pp. 25/26).

The first standard type of chessmen featuring these crowns - two to four  for the king, one to three for the queen - should be the multi-crowned chessmen etiquetted as "Selenus". Opulent specimens were "turned out" in south Germany, specifically Munich and Nuremberg - an everyday version are the basket bone chessmen made in Nuremberg from the 18th well into 19th Century. These chessmen also usually have a stylized turret rook chessmen with heads in all kinds of forms, according to the talents or or interest of the turner.

Standard bone Selenus set , as made in Nuremberg and other areas in Southern Germany through out the late 18th to end-19th century, in bone, ivory, horn and wood. Interesting are the rosebud-like "nests"  on king and queen - fancier sets sported more of them. 

These chessmen (3) seem like a forerunner for the Biedermeier type pieces - the crowns are reduced to concentric rings, the crown points to slight cuts on the rim, in the major pieces. It is a strange crossover between figurative  and  playing set, with rook and bishop still meticulously carved, while king, queen and pawns are turned. Supposedly end 17th C (probably closer to mid 18th)  - very close or contemporary to the appearance for Biedermeier style....

From the collection of R. van der Veur - picture "borrowed" from his Photo site.

This set is probably from the early 20th C - but the form has not varied immensely since the 18th C when they started to come about. this set still shows very well the basic traits of  these chessmen from the Erzgebirge toymaking area - that is, sketched faces, a pin rising lopsidely from the bishops. rooks as turrets with a spire top, and "birds nests" or crown rings on king and queen, plus very basic horsehead knights. The odd-looking pin on the bishops probably stands for the feather on the hat of an official - in figurative sets of these and earlier times in Germany the bishop usually is a runner, messenger or army official with a gaudy hat.

From the collection of Jon Crumiller - probably early 19th C if not late 18th, this set is far more elaborate, and most likely from South Germany - with the typical crows nests on king and queen. It shows some affinity to the unsurpassable sets made by the star turner of Munich, Anton Edel, in the mid 19th century in Munich - could even be from Edel's shop.

In the 18th Century , and even more in the 19th after the end of the Napoleonic wars, coffeehouses became very popular in most parts of Europe - and billiards and chess were a standard ingredient of the amusements offered in these houses. (4) The fragile and expensive chessmen of the day would not serve for the rough treatment in public - here is where the turning fraternity started to turn out sturdier and simpler pieces, with less adornments, still easily recognizable, and with distinctive features. (5) The intention must have been to produce a set which could be reproduced faster, with standardized costs, and avoiding unduly time-consuming tricks with carving. The end result was what I here would classify as the "slope-cut bishops" form:

1. Slopecut-Bishops Sets:

These are the earliest standardized type of coffeehouse chess sets (in Central Europe, that is...), and seem only to have been made in larger club size (from what I have seen.....). Has anybody seen small slope-cut  bishops Biedermeier sets? The slope-cut on bishops has a tradition that must have been widely dispersed all over Europe - the socalled Philidor set sports one, and other less known sets, also in Germany (6)

This somewhat beat-up set from the first half of the 19th century sports all the telltale signs of this format:
- slope-cut bishops with a grooved baton in the opposite colour rising amidst - without the cutoff, the top would ressemble the round heads of the toy set bishops,
- very simple knights,
- queens and kings with massive crown collars - 3 for kings and 2 for queens (or 2 and 1 ) marked with little grooves on the rims,
- a counter-colour ball on the top of kings, queens and rooks (sometimes even pawns),
- turret-style rooks.

This set obviously has replacement knights, and age-twisted pieces - also happens to people when they dry out with age! The toffee-coloured patina must have to do with lots of use - dirty fingers - in a coffeehouse or pub !

2. Disk Bishops Sets:

Disk-Bishop Sets seem to have come about later than the slope-cut variety - and are noticeably simpler to make, providing a bit of relief to turner's huffing and puffing under the enormous demand for chessmen (I am joking of course...). The normal development in manufacture would always be to find ways of slimming down and facilitating production, elimininating one or two steps of work, especially under pressure of making more important and lucrative things like furniture, ladies jewelry boxes, handles for all kinds of tools etc.  
  

The next form of sets we can sum up under the facile label "Biedermeier" take simpllification one step farther. The finely wrought disk with its little bottom peg to fit into a hole on the top of the pieces, is replaced by a baton or peg sticking out at an angle. If I may be excused, it is the degree of erection that distinguishes these sets from each other - we have long and thin batons horizontal, slightly jutting up, or even vertical - and we have rotund buttons fixed on the side of the "head" (possibly an intermediate form from disk to baton).  The batons are probably easier to turn in quantity - in any case they are even easier to break off than the disks. Both later types also occur in travel set form, with bottom pegs to insert in holes on a traveling chess board - handy in coach or train travel.

Are always handy in order to note the details - one thing You note is that practically all these sets are made in boxwood, or fruitwood, standard tuner's resoruce then as now. These woods take a long time to dry, are  more expensive to buy, and certainly more resistent against breakage.

Assuming my feeling - what else can one go on here? -  is correct, that disk and baton sets continued the slope-cut fashion, growing demand and the inherent fragility of stem sets called for a more resistant set - and the far-off echoes of the Jacques Staunton set certainly were felt on the continent, so turner's had to do something about it. The Old Vienna or Coffeehouse Austrian style was created - and still kept a touch of the old disk set about it - as the following set shows.

The term "Biedermeier" is often used to name and enoble the most diverse chess sets which happen to fall into the era we like to tag as Biedermeier - ca 1812 till 1948 and a bit beyond. In my opinion, the sets described here were the standard and public house sets of the day -  bread-and-butter sets for playing in coffeehouses, public bars, and at home. For discerning collectors or rich patrons, much more opulent sets were made to order - in ivory or exotic woods, with cute decorations highlighting the distincitve features like opposite colour filials and ornate crown rings.

The craftsmen of the day and the region delighted in playful decorations, rounded forms, comfortable furniture with turned and carved adornments. Chess sets were certainly an infinitesimally small part of a turning shop's output, and it would be very interesting to see turner's manuals and pattern books from early 19th century Austria, Germany and Bohemia, and whether these chess sets are described in those pattern books.  Like in carpentry, one turning shop might specialize in balustre's or furniture components - another fe or in small and delicate objects like ladies jewelry boxes, pipe stems, tobacco jars - or chessmen.

Many times the term Biedermeier is (ab)used - fe on ebay - as a kind of catch-all frase like "Art Deco", to designate any kind of older chess sets people don't know how to place - or want to "age" and "valorize".   I have seen Selenus bone sets named Biedermeier, Nuremberg upright bone sets, later Austrian Old Vienna sets "biedermeierized", 20th C sets labeled as authentic "Biedermeier"and so on. It seems "Biedermeier" sells, even in chess sets.

Personally, I think only a very small number of top class sets from those days show what arts and crafts in 19th Century Austria was all about -  a very good set is shown on  Andreas Witticke's page under

www.wittitscheks-schachfiguren.de/sets19/show.php?pi=19_au_02a&t=23

This is such a lovely photograph that it must be enjoyed on a full screen! These details are the "real Biedermeier" - squash-like kings top, double opposite colours on major pieces, graceful lowslung stems, polish and beautifully matched hardwoods. Such sets are very rare...

Another very fine set was snapped up recently during an heated auction on ebay for the trifle of 2.438.- USD - a premium for a wooden set not made by Jacques, surely!
I cannot show this set here - as of recently ebay pictures cannot be copied and pasted - and I advise You to take a quick look at

ebay 250557426274

before the image sinks away into the virtual nether.....

This set is absolutely superb - the bishops with tulip tops, plus intricately turned batons standing up. The bird's nests are rendered like crochet work, stems are nothing like the simple ones shown in the standard sets, and on top of that , all sections are threaded and unscrew! Oddly the spire tops of the massive rooks are not cast in opposite colours - vive la petite difference! I only hope the lucky spendthrift who bought this probably unique set will make it visible on the net, so the hundreds and thousands of chess set fans all over the world can appreciate its unique elegance.

It is a well established habit to draw a resume at the end of an inquisitive text or essay. But - there are no conclusions to draw from looking at and meandering along about an obsolete antique style of making chess sets, period-bound and created on the impulses and necessities or fashions of the day. What seems acquired is that these sets were designed - based on older existing designs - to be made in quantity, with standardized production steps, recurrent standard components (bases, batons) and assembly of pieces in a shop with-well organized division of chores.

At the end, it comes down to taste - either You like 'em or You don't. They certainly were designed and produced to respond to a demand from the public or market - and superseded when the demand changed according to fashion. Personally, I like them - they are great to handle, even to play "the game" with, entirely adequate for the exercise of chess even today, well made, with quirky details.

 But of course lots of questions arise - were these sets mainly made in Vienna for export to the farflung components of the Austrian Empire - or did czech, hungarian and german turners turn them out as well? Where can we situate the main shops for producing them? I would opt for Austria proper and Vienna - because Southern Germany, the Erzgebirge and Nuremberg in those days created their own distinctive chessmen in a different vein.

 Like in Paris, fashion  in dress, thinking, furniture and chess mores filtered from the capital to the outlying regions and not vice versa, and that goes especailly for the Biedermeier trends.  Biedermeier, after all, was a major fashion and art trend revolving around the flourishing capital of the Austrian Empire, golden Vienna as the hub of a multinacional and extended reign, with the Imperial Court, bureaucracies and army commands, with its thriving arts, music and  and literature, theatres, and concert halls, its splendid social live,  Museums accessible to the Public, and multiple newspapers and journals.

Who popped up first with the specific form? Who edited the first turning pattern books? How many of these sets might have been made? When did the turning of these pieces go out of fashion? And were the shops doing chess pieces the same ones which later on would churn out the Austrian coffeehouse type of sets? Those sets that really were a going concern at the end of the century until the end of WW I? Was the Jacobi crafts shop in Vienna - major pruveyor of Old Vienna sets from 21900 till the 1980ies - already involved in the mid-19th century?

Many questions - not every question can be answered, though.  It would take a dedicated
chess sleuth a long, long time to find half the answers to these long forgotten situations  of yesteryear. Some answers may be found in old newspapers - the Diarium of Vienna, today called the Wiener Zeitung, is the oldest continuously running daily in the world, with vast archives - old prints, paintings and drawings,  plus possibly early numbers of the Wiener Schachzeitung, might provide hints and side slants on chess piece turning, selling and use.  But most of these answers would have to be synthesized from scant tidbits in guild books, parochial registers and the like, recurring to analogies and deductions.

To nobody's surprise , there practically is no literature on Biedermeier chess sets - there might be old turner's patterns hidden in some archives or libraries, there might be company information available in Vienna crafts registries...

1. Thomas Thomsen, in:  CCI-Program - brochure , Vienna 1998, pp 21 ff (Thomsen's text is a short version of the talk he gave at that CCI meeting - those who were present probably have a better idea of it - with some good photos in b/w)

2. see fe. Ernst Strouhal, Acht x Acht, Catalogue ed. for the 1996 exhibition , Jewish Museum of Vienna, Ein Spiel der Vernunft - Schach, pp 263, 17th C. set, (later editions of the catalogue were sold as Strouhal, Schach und Kunst)
as well as sets in
Georg Himmelheber, (ed.) Schönes Schach, cat. for exhibition ,1988, Bavarian National Museum

3. Himmelheber, pp. 33 (set shown above)

4. for the general development of coffeehouses and coffeehouse culture see:
   Susanna Poldauf, CCI brochure 1998 , pp 9 ff, and
   Michael Ehn, CCI brochure 1998 , pp 13 ff  - 
      an overview over coffeehouse chess and  its ambiente is
 Ehn/Strouhal, Luftmenschen (People living on air), ed. Sonderzahl, Vienna 1998

5. Much the same could be said for the appearance of sturdy Regency chess pieces,  Old English, Philidor, and St. George sets - any chess sets pre-Staunton in the public sphere.

6. Strouhal, set 101 on pp 263 - also   http://www.wittitscheks-schachfiguren.de/sets18/show.php?pi=18_de_02b&t=7    (19th C??)