Staunton Pattern Boxwood Chess Set in Slide Top Box With Chess Rules BY W.M. Tattersall, Early 20th Century

In early 1849 Nathaniel Cook, editor at the Illustrated London Times, designed the Staunton chess set at a time when players were refusing to play with each other‘s pieces because of the difficulty in distinguishing the various chess pieces. The main patterns prior to the Staunton pattern were the Lund, Merrifield, Calvert, Barleycorn, Selenius and St George patterns. Cook used symbols in their plainest form. The King had a crown, the Queen had a coronet, the Bishop had a miter, the Knight was a horse‘s head, the Rook was a castle, and the pawn was a ball. The horses‘ heads were based on the Elgin Marbles.

The design so impressed John Jaques, a leading wood carver and brother-in-law of Nathaniel Cook, that he immediately suggested making the pieces on a commercial basis and naming the pattern after his friend the English chess master, Howard Staunton.