In the ongoing series dedicated to chess on eBay
Top eBay Chess Items by Price
(March 2010), last month's post was
Fischer - Spassky Top Items
(December 2023). I wrote,
My short list for this post had a dozen items, any one of which could have been featured for the post.
This month the situation was the opposite; my short list had zero items. I looked at twice the number of eBay pages that I usually do, came up empty handed, then looked at a number of related ideas and again came up empty handed. What to do? I decided to look again at the page of the most expensive items, concentrating on chess sets, which I often exclude from the short list because there are so many of them.
The item I finally chose was titled, 'RARE 1960s Giacometti STYLE Brutalist Bronze Chess Set'. It sold for US $1500.00 'Best offer accepted or Best Offer', which appeared to be close to the asking price.
Why did I choose this chess set instead of one of the other dozen in the top results? I've posted a couple of times on the brutalist style, where the first time was
Brutalism in Chess
(July 2011), and where I asked, 'What exactly does 'brutalist' mean?' I still don't understand the term very well.
The description of the chess set pictured above said,
32 unique ultra rare chess pieces cast by hand in the brutalist Giacometti mid-century style.
The King is 6.5" high; see photos.
16 pieces are a darker bronze and the other 16 are a lighter bronze look.
Rook, Seahorse, Bishop with spear, tall Queen, lofty King and bow-tied warriors -- a truly unique inspirational ensamble of chess pieces that is one of a kind in the world and will fascinate and find its new owner.
Each of these chess pieces is a work of art in its own right and owes this wonderfully beautiful patina to the fact that the chessmen had been forgotten in a wine cellar for decades.
The patina does not rub off on the skin or when touched.
The chess pieces are playable.
I do not have the original board. I am selling the set as it is.
The board is obviously too small for the pieces. The bases of the 'Seahorse' Knights on b1 and b8 are larger than the squares on the board.
As for Giacometti, his Wikipedia page,
Alberto Giacometti
(wikipedia.org), says,
Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism.
The page doesn't mention Brutalism, but other pages do. For example, 'sculpture in the Brutalist style of Giacometti'. That's almost exactly what the description of our chess pieces said.
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