Cubist Chess Board
I designed and made this analytic cubist chess set in the form of symphonic instruments as a gift for a band teacher. At the board level it is 20 inches by 20 inches, at the angled base it is 23 x 23 inches. The entire set is made of 3 woods: amarilla, black walnut and wenge. These woods were identical in color to what Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque used in their analytic cubist paintings.
The danger in integrating all 3 colors into every piece on the board is that a chess set strictly for functionality requires instant recognition as to what pieces belong to who, so at the same time as integrating the entire set in color choice, I was careful to make the one side predominantly of dark woods, the other side predominantly of ochre colored amarilla. I have looked at many, many chess sets and have never seen one where all pieces are integrated with the same colors.
Also, under non reflective glass are portraits of most of the students in the band class.
TO SEE UNDISTORTED IMAGES,LEFT CLICK, THEN CLICK ON OPEN IMAGE IN NEW TAB.The more tiny little angular pieces that you see in a certain piece, those are the ones that took the most time. These pieces could be much more quickly made if varying colors of wood were just sandwiched together and pieces cut out, but that would not be cubism, that would simply be vertical stripes of varying colors of wood.