But gaining widespread acceptance and adoption of a new standard is nearly impossible. And still more: the pieces should have some connection with their historical genesis so the knight should retain the characteristics of a horse, the queen should have a crown, the rook is a fortress, the bishop capped with a cleaved mitre, and so on.Ĭonceptualizing a universal design standard, with all of these factors fully accounted for, is a difficult task. And there are more requirements: the appearance of each piece needs to be aesthetically pleasing, as should the chess set as a whole. The pieces shouldn’t tip over easily, nor should they hide other pieces from view, nor should they take up too much (or too little) space on the board.
Also required would be important pragmatic considerations. Clearly, a standard was needed: a universal design for all chess pieces, so that a king could be always be identified as a king, the queen as a queen, and so on.īut visual alignment, by itself, is not enough. A chess bishop in England, for instance, had a vastly different appearance from a bishop in France, and neither bishop had any resemblance to the bishop in a so-called Islamic chess set. In the 19th century, that proviso was often unfulfilled. Two players from different parts of the world can sit across from each other and readily engage in chess battle, with one important proviso: Both players must be able to tell which chess piece is which! But the identity and essence of each piece – its moves on the chessboard, its interactions with other pieces, the rules it follows – are uniform across the globe.
is called a cavalier in France, a springer in Germany, and a caballo in Spain.
Granted, the pieces have different names in different countries, so a piece named a knight in the U.S. Chess has been called a universal language.
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