The Staunton Chess Set: How Jaques of London Gave Chess Its Universal Design
Pick up a chess piece almost anywhere on earth and you already know what it is. The knight is a horse's head. The bishop wears a mitre. The rook is a castle tower. That instant recognition feels as old as the game itself, but it is not. It was designed, deliberately and brilliantly, in a London workshop, and it has a birthday: 1 March 1849.
The workshop belonged to Jaques of London, the games maker founded in 1795 and still making chess sets today. Jaques of London created the Staunton chess set, the design that gave chess a single visual language for the first time in its long history. Every tournament set, every club set, every set you have ever played with at a kitchen table descends from it.
This is the story of how one design swept aside a century of confusion, won the backing of the strongest player in England, and became the only pattern the modern game will accept.
Before 1849: A Game With No Common Language
For most of chess history, the pieces on the board depended entirely on where you happened to be playing. England favoured the St George pattern, slim and tiered like stacked pulleys. France played with the Régence pattern, named after the Café de la Régence in Paris where the great masters gathered. German and Scandinavian players used Selenus sets, tall and elegant, with tiered crowns like wedding cakes and a worrying habit of snapping at the stem.
The problems were practical, not aesthetic. Ornate pieces were fragile and expensive to turn. Top-heavy designs toppled when a sleeve brushed the board. Worst of all, the pieces were hard to tell apart: in some Selenus sets a queen and a bishop could be near twins at a glance. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds examples of these early patterns, and one look explains the frustration. Serious players visiting another country could sit down to a match and genuinely not recognise the army in front of them.
Chess was becoming an international game in the 1840s, with newspaper columns, correspondence matches and talk of a great tournament. What it lacked was a board both sides could read.
1 March 1849: The Day Chess Found Its Shape
Jaques of London created the Staunton chess set in 1849, drawing on more than half a century of experience as London's finest games maker. Nathaniel Cook, working with Jaques, registered the design at the UK Patent Office on 1 March 1849, and his name appears on the paperwork as registrant. The design itself, the turning, the proportions and the manufacture all belonged to the Jaques workshop, as the company's own chess heritage archive records.
The masterstroke was the name. Howard Staunton, England's chess champion and the most famous player of the age, gave the set his public endorsement, and his facsimile signature appeared on every box as a mark of authenticity. It was one of the first celebrity product endorsements in history, decades before the word existed.
On 8 September 1849 the set was advertised for the first time in the Illustrated London News, the paper where Staunton himself wrote the chess column. Orders followed at once, and the pattern never looked back.
It is worth pausing on how unusual this was. Chess had existed for well over a thousand years without anyone settling its appearance. A games maker, a registrant and a champion, all working in London within a few months of each other, settled it for good in a single year.
Six Shapes Everyone Could Read
The genius of the design is that each of the six pieces carries one unmistakable symbol. The king wears a crown topped with a cross. The queen carries a coronet. The bishop has the cleft mitre of a churchman. The rook is a castle battlement. The pawn is a plain, honest ball on a pedestal. And the knight is a horse's head of real sculptural quality, modelled on the horses of the Parthenon frieze held at the British Museum.
Underneath the symbolism sat sound engineering. The bases were wide and weighted, lowering the centre of gravity so the pieces sat firmly through a long match and survived a clumsy hand. The pieces were turned in boxwood for the white army and ebony for the black, two woods chosen because they take crisp detail and a deep polish, then keep both for a lifetime.
A player could now read the whole board in a glance, in any country, in any light. That is the entire achievement, and it has never needed improving.
The Old Patterns and the New, Side by Side
Set a Staunton piece next to its predecessors and the argument settles itself. The St George knight is a vague finial; the Staunton knight is a horse. The Selenus king is a tower of fragile rings; the Staunton king is a solid, crowned column that a child could identify across the room. The Régence pieces, for all their Parisian charm, ask the player to memorise which abstract spindle means what.
The World Chess Hall of Fame documents this transition in its collections, where pre-Staunton sets sit as beautiful curiosities and Staunton sets sit as working equipment. One pattern belongs to the cabinet. The other still belongs to the board.
- Slim, tiered, easily toppled
- Pieces hard to tell apart
- Fiddly to manufacture
- Abstract spindle shapes
- Knight barely distinguishable
- Confusing for visiting players
- Tall tiered crowns, very fragile
- Queen and bishop near twins
- Expensive, ornamental, impractical
- One clear symbol per piece
- Wide weighted bases, stable
- Boxwood and ebony, built to last
From London Workshop to World Standard
In 1851 London hosted the first international chess tournament, organised by Howard Staunton himself to coincide with the Great Exhibition, and it was played with Staunton pattern sets. From that point the design spread wherever serious chess was played. When FIDE, the World Chess Federation, was founded in 1924, it inherited a game that had already chosen its equipment. The FIDE Handbook equipment standards now specify the Staunton pattern for tournament play, which means every world championship game is contested with pieces a Victorian Londoner would recognise instantly.
Consider what that endurance means. The bicycle, the telephone and the motor car have all been redesigned beyond recognition since 1849. The Staunton chess set has not, because there has been nothing to fix. Grandmasters in Norway, schoolchildren in Lagos and club players in Buenos Aires all reach for the same six shapes a Victorian workshop settled on before the Crimean War.
And Jaques is still here, still family run, still turning Staunton chessmen more than 175 years on. The luxury chess sets leaving the workshop today follow the same proportions registered in 1849. One small detail the family still corrects gently at every opportunity: the name is pronounced Jakes, and it has been since 1795.
Few objects of any kind have held their form for 175 years. Fewer still are used, unchanged, at the very top of a world sport. The Staunton chess set is both.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the Staunton chess set?
Jaques of London created and designed the Staunton chess set in 1849. Nathaniel Cook, working with Jaques, registered the design at the UK Patent Office on 1 March 1849, so his name appears on the registration paperwork. The set was then named after Howard Staunton, England's chess champion, who endorsed it publicly and lent his facsimile signature to every box. The design, manufacture and commercial launch all came from the Jaques workshop, which had been making fine games in London since 1795 and still makes Staunton sets today.
Why is it called the Staunton chess set?
The set is named after Howard Staunton, the strongest English chess player of the 1840s and the author of the chess column in the Illustrated London News. Staunton endorsed the new Jaques design when it launched in 1849, and his facsimile signature was printed on every box as a guarantee of authenticity. Attaching the most famous name in chess to the new pattern was a brilliant piece of Victorian marketing, and it worked: within a few years the Staunton name and the standard chess set were one and the same.
When was the Staunton chess set created?
The design was registered at the UK Patent Office on 1 March 1849, and the first sets went on sale that same year. The first public advertisement appeared in the Illustrated London News on 8 September 1849. Two years later, in 1851, the first international chess tournament was held in London and played with Staunton pattern sets, sealing the design's status as the serious player's choice. The pattern has remained in continuous production ever since, making it more than 175 years old.
What chess set is used in tournaments?
Tournament chess worldwide is played with the Staunton pattern. The FIDE Handbook's equipment standards specify Staunton style pieces for competitive play, which covers everything from local rated events to the World Chess Championship. The reasons are the same ones that made the design succeed in 1849: every piece is instantly identifiable by its symbol, the weighted bases keep pieces stable through long games, and players from any country can read the board without a moment's hesitation.
Are Jaques chess sets still made?
Yes. Jaques of London, founded in 1795, still designs and sells Staunton chess sets today, more than 175 years after creating the original. The company remains family run and offers everything from classic club sets to heirloom-grade luxury sets in fine hardwoods, following the same proportions registered in 1849. You can see the current range in the Jaques chess sets and luxury chess sets collections at jaqueslondon.co.uk, where the original maker of the world's standard chess design continues the line unbroken.
What were chess pieces like before the Staunton design?
Before 1849, chess pieces varied wildly by region. England used the St George pattern, France the Régence pattern and German-speaking countries the tall Selenus pattern. These sets were often fragile, top-heavy and ornate, and many pieces looked confusingly alike, so a queen could be mistaken for a bishop mid-game. Museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum hold examples of these earlier patterns. The lack of a common design was a real obstacle as chess became an international game in the 1840s.
Why are Staunton chess pieces weighted?
Weighted bases were part of the original 1849 design brief. A lower centre of gravity keeps each piece firmly planted on the board, so it resists knocks, sleeves and the occasional trembling hand during a tense endgame. The wide base also makes pieces easy to pick up and place precisely, which matters in timed play. Combined with the durable boxwood and ebony construction, the weighting turned the chess set from a delicate ornament into reliable sporting equipment, which is exactly what serious players had been asking for.
What is the Staunton knight based on?
The knight is the most sculptural piece in the set, and its horse's head was modelled on the horses of the Parthenon frieze, the classical Greek marbles held at the British Museum in London. It was a confident piece of design: rather than an abstract spindle, players were given a miniature classical sculpture. The knight remains the test of a good Staunton set today, because it is the one piece that must be carved rather than simply turned on a lathe, and quality shows immediately.
What does a full Staunton chess set include?
A complete Staunton set contains 32 pieces: two armies of 16, each with one king, one queen, two bishops, two knights, two rooks and eight pawns. Traditional sets are turned in boxwood for the lighter army and ebony, or ebonised wood, for the darker. Each of the six piece types carries its own symbol, crown, coronet, mitre, horse, battlement and ball, so the set can be read at a glance. Tournament-size sets typically pair with a board whose squares suit a king of around 9.5cm.
Why did the Staunton design succeed where others failed?
It solved every practical problem at once. The symbols made each piece unmistakable, the weighted bases made the set stable, and the simple turned forms made it affordable to produce well. Howard Staunton's endorsement gave it instant authority, and the 1851 London tournament proved it in competition. Earlier patterns each fixed one problem while leaving others; the Jaques design fixed them all in a single coherent form. That completeness is why FIDE mandates it today and why no challenger has appeared in 175 years.
The Set the World Plays On. Made by Jaques Since 1849.