The Live Edge Chess Set
A chess set cut from olive wood with the live edge left on the board, so the outer rule of the game is decided by the tree rather than the ruler. Made by Woodzire in Nagina, India. Board dimensions, piece heights, and finish are confirmed against the piece in hand before this goes on sale.
Chess sets tend to arrive pretending to be older than they are: fake ebony, fake ivory, a board that folds in the middle and holds the pieces like a lunchbox. This one skips the costume. Olive wood, which has been furnishing the Mediterranean for about as long as anyone has been losing at this game, and a board that keeps the live edge instead of squaring it off.
The grain in olive runs in tight dark rivers, so no two boards land the same and the pieces never quite match each other either. That is the point. A set like this gets left out on the table between games, which is the honest test of whether an object is good looking: not whether you display it, but whether you can be bothered to put it away.
No reviews yet. The first person to live with one gets to say what that’s like.
