Chess Sets Are the Real Deal

For this month's Flickr favorite, I had another AI image on the short list, DALL-E 2023-02-04 23.17.22 - A picture of two AIs playing chess (flickr.com), which came with another half-dozen images in the same series. This latest DALL-E example wasn't nearly as compelling as the previous examples, last seen in Karpov and Kasparov Play Chess in Iceland (March 2023), so I went with a different composite.

Upper right: UK TV Antiques Shows © Flickr user antefixus21 under Creative Commons.

The description on the linked Flickr page explained,

I found these images of an antique (around 1860) English ivory hand turned chess set requiring some restoration on YouTube in a popular UK TV series "A Very Attractive Set of Three Bottles Tantalus | Dickinson’s Real Deal | Season 07 Episode 76 | HomeStyle". The vendor sold the lot to a dealer for £250.

The title in quotes ("") is the same as a Youtube video (channel: 'The Real Deal') linked after the Flickr description. After the video link is a second link to a page titled, 'The Standardization of Chess Set Design' (kottke.org).

The photographer's index page of photos has a few other chess sets and boards, indicating a general interest in the subject. For more about the TV series, see Dickinson's Real Deal (wikipedia.org).