Chess Atlas is a visual timeline tracing 1,300 years of chess-piece design through more than 120 images grouped by six materials: ivory & bone, wood, ceramic & porcelain, metal, crystal & glass, and mixed/conceptual. It surveys earliest surviving pieces (Afrasiab c.700, Sasanian and Persian ceramics), medieval highlights like the Lewis and Charlemagne sets, ornate Indian export ivories and Meissen and Wedgwood porcelains, then the wood-driven evolution of form culminating in Nathaniel Cook’s 1849 Staunton standard. The modern century is represented by Bauhaus and Dada experiments (Josef Hartwig, Man Ray), artist-architect collaborations and commemorative metal sets (Calder, Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Fischer-Spassky 1972), transparent and decorative glass/crystal works (Noguchi, Swarovski, Murano, Nendo), and contemporary conceptual commissions and novelty sets (Duchamp, Dalí, Yoko Ono, Hirst, Kusama, LEGO).
The presentation’s core claim is that chess pieces chart cultural, technological and aesthetic shifts: materials signal status and function (ivory for courts, wood for standard competition, porcelain for luxury, metal and glass for artistic statements), while design moves from abstract early primitives to standardized tournament geometry to radical artistic reinvention. Key turning points include the Afrasiab and Sasanian abstractions, the expressive narrative of the Lewis pieces, Staunton’s universalizing impact, Noguchi’s Lucite for The Imagery of Chess, and late-20th/21st-century art commissions that recast chess as an art object and platform for designers.
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