Hand-carved marble chess · Carrara — Paris
Some gamesare never finished.
We carve chess sets from Carrara and Nero Marquina marble, one piece at a time, and keep a salon where the old games are still played. Begin with the most famous of them.
London · 21 June 1851
The Immortal Game
An informal game at Simpson’s Divan, played in a break of the first international tournament. Anderssen gives away a bishop, both rooks and his queen — and mates with what is left.
1–0 · Your move
The game is over.
The board is yours.
Pick up any piece and put it down wherever you like. Drop it on an opponent and it falls. Each piece is turned, carved and polished by hand; each one weighs what a chess piece should.
No. 1851 · The Immortal Set
Carrara &
Nero Marquina.
Thirty-two pieces from two quarries a thousand kilometres apart: white statuary from the Apuan Alps above Carrara, and black Nero Marquina from Markina in the Basque hills, its veins running bone and gold.
- King
- 98 mm, Staunton proportions, weighted and felted in green baize
- Board
- Botticino and Emperador squares, 57 mm, inlaid in American black walnut with a brass fillet
- Hands
- One carver per set, from the first cut to the last polish — eleven weeks
- Edition
- Numbered, signed under the white king. Forty sets a year
€3,900 board, set and fitted case · delivered by hand in Europe
Reserve set No. 1851The Salon · rue Saint-Honoré, Paris
Members’
evenings.
A few doors from where the Café de la Régence once stood, twelve tables under twelve lamps. Kieseritzky telegraphed this game to his club in Paris the night he lost it. We have been replaying it ever since.
- Tuesday20:00
Replay night
A grandmaster walks the room through one historic game, move by move. This month: the Evergreen, Berlin 1852.
- Thursday19:30
Slow chess
Ninety minutes a side. Clocks are pressed, never slammed. Wine by the glass, phones in the drawer.
- First Sunday16:00
The simultaneous
Our house master plays twenty members at once. Win, and your name is cut into the wall.
€480 a year · two guest evenings · your own locker for your own set
Apply for membership