Essay & Notes
so far:
- The Most copied chess set in the world - King Arthur by ANRI
- Are plastic sets collectable?
- J.A. Nekvasil - the last manufacturer of Austrian Chess Pieces
Please send comments, protests, counteropinions, or even essays and viewpoints of your own, etc. - will be published if not offensive (:
J.A.Nekvasil - the last manufactory of Austrian Chess Pieces
Sometime in the 80ies the placid Viennese chess community was rudely disturbed by the news that the business of Jan Anton Nekvasil in the outlying Ottakring district was about to close for good and was selling off all remaining stock at breakneck prices. A steady stream of old customers, chess fans, coffeehouse keepers and chess rats of all sorts started to trickle into the small shop set in the Outer Thaliastrasse and went about to deplete the thinly stocked shelves. I was not there in those days - what I heard is that the sales lasted very briefly - in two weeks it was all gone, who missed out on the bonanza could only rue his bad luck. Thus it came about that the last chess piece manufactury in Austria, with almost a hundred years of tradition, vanished from sight in a fortnight, leaving as traces only the numerous chess sets they had produced since the heydays of the 19th Century!
The Nekvasil shop in Ottakring
The Nekvasil shop plus production had existed for ages in the location in Ottakring, consisting of a street shop with games galore - mostly made inhouse - and a narrow cellar where two ancient workmen beavered away among suffocating clouds of wood dust and varnish and glue fumes with lathes, saws, drills, and worktables. At the time of closing, production had probably dwindled to a small scale of products - but over the whole postwar era the business produced quite a large range of chess games.
Traditionally Austrian - some people prefer to call them Old Vienna chessmen - chess pieces came with a folding board which housed the chessmen - or with chess tables with or without drawers for the pieces - and Nekvasil sold a large part of their chessmen with such folding boards. The mainstay was off course the turning of chess pieces in the traditonal Viennese/Austrian style, with pointed hats and three rings around the stem for the kings. Most of the chess sets were for home use, but Nekvasil also made club size sets with imposing 110 mm kings, and slightly smaller ones with king sizes of 96 mm or less for leisure use. These pieces were produced in a decreasing scale of sizes, down to miniatures with 66 mm kings, and were generally sold in the mentioned folding box /board with a horseneck clasp (later tip down clasps).
"Coffeehouse" Chess Sets
Since chess in Europe first flourished in coffeehouses, it has become a habit to typecast all Austrian chess sets as coffeehouse sets. For Nekvasil and his predecessors the coffeehouses certainly were an important part of their customers. Nekvasil turned out rugged chess sets without pretence to artistic excellence, for use in Vienna's numerous coffeehouses - where a few chess boards used to be part of the arsenal of games and entertainment provided for the guests - for the toy trade, for all kinds of shops all over Austria and neighbouring areas, and also small amounts of other games like draughts, domino, dice and cups - not all made inhouse, though.
It is reasonable to assume that chess clocks and all other kinds of chess paraphernalia were sold in the Ottakring shop as well. The chess sets were made in quality standards varying from the simple and gross to the very fine and well finished - for example the folding box boards could be ordered in veneer or even marquetry inlay, or simple offset -imprinted boards. The chess sets were produced in unvarnished condition, with a simple varnish , as well as polished versions with very fine varnish. As the years went by, and the market started to go stale, products in general became cruder in appearance and sloppier in finish. Boxes that had been joined in traditional carpentry joindry (swallowtail or connecting triangle) , were simply glued or nailed together board on board - chess boards were not inlaid in marquetry any more, but veneered and later just printed on.
Chess Capital Vienna
According to chess historian Michael Ehn , Jan Anton Nekvasil was the last in line of a family business that had started out as Jacoby and Company well before the First World War, possibly going back to the 2.half of the 19th Century. Nekvasil is a Czech name, reflecting the massive influx of Bohemian craftsmen into Austria throughout the 19th century. In those days before WW I - in the "World of Yesterday" - and throughout the interwar years, Vienna was one of the leading chess capitals,, with chess mainly concentrated in the Vienna coffeehouses like Cafe Central, Café Herrenhof or Café Museum, and sporting the grandest Chess Club in the World, the Rothschild-sponsored Wiener Schachclub, as well as a powerful and extensive proletarian chess movement. The "Wiener Schachzeitung", edited under the patronage of Rothschild, was the leading chess magazine and fountain of tournament reports in Europe, far outdistancing its German or British competitors like the "Deutsche Schachzeitung" or the "British Chess magazine" in volume, content - and chronical lateness in being published! According to Ehn, who has written several articles and monographs on Viennese chess history, Vienna in the 30ies sported a good 220 coffeehouses, where chess was one of the daily pastimes, with chess sets provided by the house! Considering this number, and adding the many coffeehouses in the provincial towns, in former cities of the K.u.K empire like Budapest or Ljubljana or Brno or Czernowitz, it is easy to conclude that making chess pieces and sets in those days must have been a going business.
Following the 2. World War, the tumultuous changes in living style led to a steady diminution of the numbers of people playing chess - the survival struggle after the war, the Four- Power occupation of Austria till 1955, the arrival of Television and a lessening of coffeehouse frequentation must have weighed hard on the fortunes of the small chess shop. Add to this the arrival of huge toy chains, of supermarket and shopping malls bringing about the demise of smaller toy shops and gentlemens tobacco shops - all of this social change must have contributed to steadily diminish sales turnover.
Innovation attempts
At one time or another Nekvasil must have undertaken major efforts to go with the tide and innovate - and in one of these moments started to produce a very crude Staunton chess set, probably responding to demand from the coffeehouse and club trade, and in line with the FIDE recommendation dating back to 1924 to use only Staunton sets for tournament play. I know that these recommendations were ignored in Austria for a long time - as late as in the 70ies we used to play local league meetings and tournaments with Austrian chessmen. Even after 1924 and Fide's option for Staunton chessmen, the grand tournaments of Semmering 1926 and Karlsbad 1929 - to name just a few - were played with Austrian chessmen in the long established form.
"Kaffeehaussterben" in Vienna
Starting in the 70ies and even more the 80ies droves of traditional coffeehouses had to throw in the towel faced with rocketing rents, dwindling rentability and lessening trade. The press - journalists being eternal coffeehouse inmates by nature - used to comment the end of each coffeehouse with woeful laments, ending in a virtual dirge about the "Kaffeehaussterben" (coffee house epidemic). Drug stores, banks and utility markets replaced many a centennial and traditionial café - and since clubs usually camped in their local coffeehouse, speeded up the disappearance of one chess club after the other - with the ensuing repercussions on sales of chess pieces and chess goods.
Plastic Viennese
Nekvasil made one other attempt to improve his fortunes, and must have had at least one mold made for injecting plastic chess pieces in the Old Viennese style. I own one tiny set in white and black plastic in one of the crude cardboard boxes with a Nekvasil logo on top - most likely this mold was intended to provide some extra income by providing the toy trade with cheap little chess pieces to put into family compendiums or chess sets intended for children. But as we know from other experiences, when plastic starts to replace wood it also speeds up the demise of the craft production - and the small chess pieces in wood Nekvasil formerly had produced were undercut by cheaper plastic pieces, amounting to something akin to a shot into the own foot!
Chessmen in Austrian style
The traditional Viennese or Austrian chess pieces had very early in the 19th century found their form - and as so many things, after the abrupt break with the past which the 1. World War produced - many products from before the war were simply continued. The fabulous Austrian upright sets of the fin de siecle found a late ressonance in the FIDET sets produced in Czechoslovakia - but the simpler Austrian sets solidified into their form and continued to be made until the 1960ies and 1970ies. It is easy to note that the forms get cruder, finish gets simpler and the forms of for example the knights get more stereotypical as the Nekvasil/Jacoby business survives other turners, and finally remains alone on the field as chess piece maker - under severe competition from imported Staunton chess sets but without any competitor in its own field. If You look at the many Austrian chess sets appearing for example in collections or on ebay You almost get the idea that with minor or major changes - a slightly different knight here, longer or shorter or no filials on kings and queens there - almost all chessmen are more or less variations of Nekvasil chess pieces! Or that Nekvasil postwar pieces with their appealingly crude knights, massive forms, and shoddy paper pads are just a degenerated end version of a long line of Austrian chess pieces! If You compare older sets with the latest Nekrasil produce You also begin to suspect that the Jacoby/Nekvasil company must have accompanied the subtle changes in the canonized Austrian form from further back than we think.
Deep research needed
It remains for a dedicated private historian to delve into the history of the company via company records, the commercial register and other sources to try to fix the start of their extended production run in chessmen, and their position and importance in comparison with other makers of Austrian and South German chess men - who unfortunately mostly have faded away into anonymity as well! One might argue of course that it is totally indifferent to delve into the dusty fortunes of a vanished turning workshop, especially 20 years after the fact. But the fortunes of chess - and of chess piece turners, naturally - are symptoms and indicators of larger trends and developments in mankinds stumbling progress towards - where? It is good to keep in mind the old adage that societies that negate or forget their past are condemned to repeat it again and again and again........
Nekvasil logo
The Nekvasil logo - obviously post WW 2 - because of the Made in Austria - slogan - a crown to refer to the Royal game - and a circle to pass along the idea of an offer encompassing everything in chess!
Nekvasil cardboard boxes
These boxes were obviously also made in the cellar - clamped together from rough cardboard. F stands for Figuren, K for Kassette - the numbers indicate there were at least 5 sizes between the mini set - king 60 mm - and the ST. 5 set (king 87 mm). The K number equally suggests numerous sizes of folding cassette chess games - this one is small size with 68 mm kings!
An archetypical Nekvasil Club Set
110 mm kings, oilpaper pads under pieces covering a lathe borehole, crude onepiece knights, onepiece bishops, black top painted on, massive appearance....most likely from around 1950 - 1970....
Copyright Nicholas Lanier 2009 - reprint only with consent of the author!
Are plastic chess sets collectable?
This is quite obviously a rhetoric questions - especially if you browsed though my Plastic section. Anything is collectable, and people will collect the oddest artefacts from triglobites via bottlecorks to railway pins, for the most diverse reasons. The question, put correctly is rather whether is is worthwhile for a chess set collector to collect plastic chess sets.
Before going into this, lets lay out a few facts - opinions, as we know, come a dime to a dozen, tastes vary - but facts are facts! Plastic was invented by an englishman named Alexander Parkes in 1855, mixing clelulose with nitric acid and a solvent. At the same time, a frenchman named Lepage produced a kind of moldable artificial wood, mixing sawdust with binderwhich could be formed in molds and polsihed to a smooth consistency ("bois durci" or hardened wood). But the first real plastic - in the sense of being a synthetic polymer - was Bakelite, a mixture of Formaldehyde with Phenol, named after the inventor Henri Baekeland, who set up a production company to produce the stuff. When his patent expired in 1930, the british Catalin company took over the process, eliminating some of the problems inherent in Bakelite, and creating new colours and applications. Bakelite was used in growing amounts for all kinds of products, some of which have become highly sought after collectors items today - Bakelite radios, brushes, hearing aids, and of course games and chess sets. After WW1 plastics industry developed like a bush fire, with new products being for example Polyamid (Nylon), Polystyrene and todays omnipresent Polyvinylchloride (PVC). During WW" the germans came up with synthetic rubber (Buna). Polyurethan was developed by Bayer in Germany, Polyethylene and Polypropylene came about after WW2.
The word plastic means simply that the material so designed is formable in molds, compressable, malleable and usable in multiple ways. This was of course the fulfillment of the dream of scientists and industrialists who had been researching and developing new materials to replace the age old basic materials existing in nature or syntesized from natural materials like metal, wood, horn, stone plus glass.
From our standpoint, it is important to note that older plastics were relatively cheap in their day, ideal to substitute the dearer natural materials, and permitted the use of machines in producing sequential products in line with much greater facility than ever possible with wooden, glass or metal objects.
Plastic chess pieces in bakelite days were produced by simple molds under pressure - the first injection machinery was also patented in the second half of the 19th century, one of the first products being billiard balls from cellulose! This process has considerably changed over time, but the principle is the same: hot plastic mixture is injected into a two-piece mold, which after cooling is opened releasing the formed object. Imagine the whole process at breakneck speed, and you have an idea how injected plastic chess pieces are produced.
Early plastic cobjects sought to imitate the refined form and looks of handmade products, and therefore conserve a bit of the indirect charm of top handicraft. In chess pieces, we may safely say bakelite pieces from pre-WW2 days are usually well made, although the material does age quite a lot and gets brittler with age. Such pieces are obviously interesting, the material is heavy and solid, and all kinds of artistic forms were experimentally undertaken. I mention for example the colourful Catalin sets of Grey's of Cambridge, the disk sets of Military Service renown in England, the US butterscotch variations of phenol chess pieces. But all of these pieces are not really rare, and were made in hundreds of thousands or units - discount the natural loss over time and they are still mass products. This means that the inherent value of chess sets of these days is not very high - the market value of course is determined by the interest generated under certain circumstances - the impulse of a heated auction or the gleam in the buyer's eye.
In those heady days from 1920 to 1940 wood chess sets were still going strong, much preferred by actual chess players, and therefore plastic sets were directed to the novelty and toy market rather than the club and chessplayer clientele. This means that even with old sets supply was plentyful, designs were tooled for the amateur, and chess sets are generally not in club size. All in all the conclusion has to be: early plastic sets are possibly interesting for their forms, as cultural exhibits, and for the unusual weight or characteristics of the material - but they are not "valuable".
Industrial production may invent or generate new forms - but in most cases imitates older forms. Forms or designs are difficult to patent or protect even nowadays - and more so in former days. Therefore many later plastic designs are simply slipshod copies of older originals in wood, metal, bone or ivory. With bakelite chess sets we do find original designs, but a lot of imitation of older forms as well. With newer chess sets in plastic, this tendency for mimikri gets even stronger - the motivation for ordering a plastic mold is not to create new artistic forms, but to make a profit by reducing the production costs by a large margin.
Lets look at the question from a different angle - from the point of molds. Molds nowadays last a lot longer than in the bakelite era, although the pressure used in injection is much higher. Molds today are milled from special steel - special stainless steel mixtures - but have to be serviced and regularly restored. This means that during the lifetime of a mold the produced artefacts will change subtly as the mold is polished up again and again. A mold that is out of use and not properly conserved will rust rapidly and deteriorate to a point where restoration is more expensive than milling a new one! All in all, modern mold technology allows just any kind of mold to be made, and that means there is no limit to the forms a chess pieces might take that is being mold injected.
An infinity of materials is available, hundreds of mixtures of the most various components that can be dissolved and injected to create certain consistencies, hardness or softness, colours and resistance to heat or sunlight for example. Raw materials for mold injection are not cheap - many of them are based on crude oil - and the choice of mix preterdmines unit cost of injected objects!
The most interesting fact is therefore that anything is possible - but market conditions will dictate which materials are used, which quality of product is intended, and which price the finished object will have. Nowadays chess pieces and chess molds are a risky affair as chess is receding in the western countries - although expanding in some third world countries - and the market for plastic chess pieces is certainly not growing.
I could imagine an interest composed out of a scientific or morbid curiosity about the copycat appearance of plastic chess sets, reflecting older originals - or a simple collecting of forms, any kinds of forms regardless of material - plastic chess sets of course come in an infinity of declinated forms, although the gros are some variation of Staunton sets. I also know somebody who is fascinated by the variety of Staunton plastics, and takes a certain perverse pleasure in meditating on the original designs which were commercially ruined by the mass copies! Thw whole idea being to collect continuous evidence of the degeneration of our material culture via industrial mass production! This is not really a typical collectors interest, but rather a private form of industrial sociology and archeology - if not a complicated form of cultural and civilisational masochism, documented via chess pieces!
The fact is, there are a great amount of chess pieces in plastic substances around. One spanish company I know - long gone bankrupt - started out in the 40ies by commissioning handcarved chess sets from carvers and craftsmen, then progressed to replicating them in machine-aided carving (robbing the craftsmen...), progressed to resin/sawdust mold copies, then to mold injected plastic pieces painted and packaged in executive type carry cases - then to importing Taiwan plastic chess pieces - and then mercifully went out of business! What a slide down the chute from high standards to the dregs of industrial prostitution - a fate shared by many companies and craftsmen in adjacent crafts all over Europe and probably the USA as well.
If there can be a conclusion for collectors - from my point of view - it is not to be innocent and dewy-eyed in regard of plastic or bakelite chess pieces. It is of course true that extraordinary objects can be fashioned from plastic - vide my Russian plastic chess set which was specifially commissioned by the Russian Plastics Association to prove the possibilities of the medium! - but the normal run of things would not go in that direction, in respect to interesting chess pieces, or artistically accomplished objects in general - most of them are at best competently made utilitarian toys, useful as a tupperware bowl when new, cheap and prone to hit the trash bin when not attractive or needed any more!
Without doubt the countless types of plastic and resins in use today permit the most astonishing chess set to be made - irisating, opaque or partly translucent sets ("Lucite"), fragile forms, massive weights or lightweight. One US producer some time ago was proposing heavy Staunton sets in 19th Century style, turned and milled from kevlar blocks! But the most interesting plastic sets seem to have been made some time ago - the abstract set by victor Vasarely in plexyglass, the US bakelite sets of the thirties mounted on a central screw and detachable in sections, or the various opulent sets made in the former Soviet union in plastic materials.
Plastic is a dead material, it does not appeal to humans by touch, smell or taste, has practically no electrical current or magnetic field It is an alienated material, like concrete. For me, there are exceptions where plastic chess sets are very attractive - but I only need to close my eyes to see hordes of plastic Staunton chess pieces advancing, to the phut-phut- sound of thousands of injection machines, in order to experience a slight twinge of unspeakable horror.....
The most copied set in the world ?
Strictly speaking, the most copied form of chessmen is the Jacques/Cooke Staunton design patented in 1849 - which immediately started to get copied or emulated by competitors and copycats abroad, despite strenuous attempts to maintain the exclusivity from the part of the patentees.
But in recent times, one set has become the object of numerous copies - legal, halflegal and illegal - and that is the King Arthur set from the 1960ies, designed in the manufactory of Anton Rifesser in Val Gardena, vulgo ANRI. It is not my intention to discuss the legal background of copying or protecting designs - I am not qualified for that, and do not have the information from ANRI - but simply to show some of the numerous metamorphoses these pieces have undergone in secondary and tertiary copies all over the world. It is fairly easy to distinguish authentic ANRI sets - by virtue of the brand sticker, the patent boxes and the meticulous finish - but for the layman there is a confusing variety of emulations, starting with Toriart resin versions, via Lowe's Renaissance ANRI set in plastic, down to gross chinese plastic copies.
King Arthur was made by ANRI between 1958 and 1993, both in natural and polychrome versions. It stands to reason that this was the second most sold chess set, after the Monsalvat small size set (with 3 " kings). A halfsize version of King Arthur in ebony and ivory was produced between 1961 and 1964.
Arthur copy from Val Gardena
Very early on, there must have been copies from carvers next door - this is a very good version, in maple natural and blackened, single-piece figurines, a bit smaller than the original.
Renaissance Set by Lowe
Contained in a showy carton, these pieces are very close to the orginal.
King Arthur in plastic by Lowe
A plastic version, mold produced, which was commercialized by US games house Lowe as ANRI set - obviously with the assent of the ANRI company - as a downmarket version of the handmade original. I have no idea if the mold was the same as for the Renaissance set - but it stands ro reason. Compare how the fairly expressive features of the original become slurred in the translation to mold injection....perhaps a well used mold getting indistinct?
"ANRI" plastic
Here is another version in plastic - probably made in Taiwan or China.
Taiwan copy
Another chinese copy, possibly from the same mold as the one above - "Made in Taiwan" sticker - strangely enough imported into Spain by a major spanish games house.
King Arthur in polystone
A polystone (resin cum plaster) version - perhaps on the basis of something similar to those SUPERCAST rubber molds so popular formerly.
Roxy Chess version
A slightly altered version - to avoid legal problems? - by a company called Roxy Chess. Take note of the flat bases - to avoid legal wrangles?
Garden set in plaster
A huge garden version in plaster...
Comparisons 1
Three versions - the original in the centre, a plastic copy left, a Val Gardena copy right. Unfortunately not as sharp a foto as called for....but You can see that the Val Gardena followup is the same height as the original with a separate base - the plastic version is "baseless" and a bit smaller...
Comparisons 2
The crowns are revealing - plastic, wood, wood.
Comparisons 3
Very intersting the kights - the orginal on the left, the local wood reevocation with a less fiery steed, the plastic horse with a strong support, molds have to produce contingent pieces...
Comparisons 4
Sli8ght alteratin in the wood copy (middle), runt size for the plastic rook.
Comparisons 5
Original pawn on the right - feisty and blocky copy in the middle, small plastic version on the left.
Comparisons 6
The copycat bishop on the right sports a differnet expressions, and a more massive head - the plastic bishop is in the middle.
Resumé
The numerous copies give a slight idea of the dramatic battle for market share that must have taken place in the postwar years for carved showpieces - with the traditional European centres of soutern Germany, Val Gardena, North of Spain being pressured by cheaper chinese or eastern machine-carved imports. Plus the struggle to survive for carving houses via downmarket versions of their costly and luxurious products, the licensing of mold-injected versions and other kinds of follow-ups.
We know what happenend - the market went down the drain - and a large part of European carving handcraft followed suit - with the exception of the Val Gardena carvers, who managed to cling to an elite and luxury market thanks to their quality and top promotion strategies, focusing on the largest market for handicraft products in the world, the USA. Today ANRI in the USA is a well established brand, with a large following, collectors clubs, regular changes in their collections, and a thriving and pricey secondhand market. That applies also to the chess sets, even the resin toriart versions - of which only the Montsalvat continues to be made.
Copyright Nicholas Lanier 2009 - reprint only with consent of the author!