Dalmatia Revisio (Dubrovnik Revisited); 32 Artistically Reimagined Dubrovnik Chess Pieces, wood, unweighted, antiqued and distressed, Staunton Castle Reproduction of the Fischer Era version.
Height: King 9.5cm, weight 30g, base width 4.5cm; Queen 8.3cm wt. 28g, Bishop 7.3cm 20g, Knight 7.3cm 25g, Rook 5.5cm 23g, Pawns 5cm 11g.
W: lush burgundy felt bases, B: same.
This reproduction of the famous Dubrovnik Series of chessmen is one of my favourite patterns (and Bobby Fischer’s too!), which was kindly made especially for me in unweighted raw boxwood by the artisans at Staunton Castle, who are based in India but have an outpost here in Canada, too.
Over the coming months, we’ll be working on 5 more of these Dubrovniks, some antiqued, some not, but all will carry the smaller bishop finials, as you see here in our first Dubrovnik. This is purely my own artistic taste as the larger ball finials have always irked me. Now the knights, the real stars of the show, really shine through.
The antiqued and distressed ‘burgundy v. golden ochre’ colour scheme of the Revisio is actually inspired by a famous pattern favoured by another master from the 70s, Bent Larson, namely the Knubbel sets of Germany/Scandinavia. The unusual ball finials of the king and queen, which now take centre stage, and the opposing colours of the queen’s crowns are particularly reminiscent of the Knubbel design, a muted variation of which is seen here.
If you are interested in one of the other 5 Dubrovniks and wish to join the waiting list please contact us at thechessschach (at) gmail (dot com).
Both kings carry the hand-painted, iridescent copper ‘Power’ signature of the artist on their bases. Dalmatia Revisio is also accompanied by our hand-drawn ‘Certificate of Artistry’ which will be posted out separately once we tally up how many ‘Copper Signature’ sets pass through our galleries in 2022 “… all good things …” as the old saying goes.
For more info on the certificate see our January 2022 Chessay on our ALL ABOUT CHESS page.