OFFICIAL STAUNTON UK ONLINE CHESS STORE

Carl Miceli, our Director and the founder of many online chess brands such as, The English Chess Company, ChessMaze International, Wholesale Chess Company to mention but a few. An avid chess player since the age of 7yrs! it seemed a natural progression to have an interest in everything chess!.

Claire Bishop ( no kidding! ) has been with the company since 2004 and is the lovely person taking all your telephone calls and emails and is also responsible for logistics and customer after sales.

Lisa Miceli, is head honcho in charge of Seo and all things digital, including product marketing at Facebook Twitter and Instagram. Lisa has been with us since 2014 and has been pinnacle in our brand awareness and her marketing skills are unrivalled.

Staunton is the ultimate for players and collectors alike. Its present standing in its impeccable ancestry is unquestioned. The firm introduced the first Staunton design to players in October of 1849 and have been producing the world standard ever since. World Championship matches from the Zukertort Blackburn battle in 1882 to the Karpov - Kasparov encounters over 100 years later were played on original Jaques equipment. At Fischer's insistence, three were made for their legendary World Championship encounter in Reykjavik. Korchnoi and Karpov would not start play in their World Championship match in Manila until an original Jaques could be provided. Jaques have been and are the "Gold Standard" . A Jaques will always hold its value and constantly brings the highest prices at auction. The form, board presence and exquisite craftsmanship of a Jaques have been recaptured in our Antiqued collection and are being offered for the first time through our company

OUR HISTORY

Our company has been in the chess business for many years, during this time we have met with some of the finest and worse chess set manufacturers and so called dealers. It has been an experience to say the least! Our company director, Carl Miceli has spent years sourcing the finest chess sets and chess boards manufacturers to ensure our company offers nothing less than sheer quality. Time is a great leveller and Carl has used this time to sift through the many middle men peddling poor quality chess sets and now only ise of lewis chess set works with the top 3 main manufacturers in Amritsar, India.

It has taken substantial time and hard learned lessons to finally get to a point where we now only deal with the best! so all in all, a costly learning curve, but one that allows us to move forward positively and confident that we are retailing the finest hand carved chess pieces available on the market.

When you search the internet for you will be presented with a google page of many relevant chess companies to choose from. How do you know which to choose? Do you look for the lowest price for example? What about the quality of a chess set? What about the materials used to make it? Will it stand the test of time, and will the set be a quality set of chess pieces to hand down generations? These are questions to consider seriously when spending a lot of your hard earned money. Our promise to our customers is that you can be sure of sterling quality, backed with the knowledge that your chess set has been hand carved using quality materials and made with care and attention to detail.

How to match Chess Piece and Board Size ?

Indeed buying a chess set may present with many decisions. Size of the chess pieces, the base diameter of the king (usually the largest piece) will the pieces fit on the board you may already have? or thinking of buying. The standard size as used in tournament chess competitions is approx 3.75 Inch (95mm)

First you need to consider the size of playing square of the chessboard where the pieces will be used. For example; a chessboard with a square size of 2 Inch would require a kings base diameter to be no greater than 75% and no less than 60%. This method is used in respect of different sized chess sets also.

When considering a chess set, first consider your budget and what the set will be used for; if it is for example a set used for a beginner then perhaps a simple economy set would suffice. Then if the beginner decides to stay with the game they could always upgrade to a decent set of staunton chess pieces.

There are so many wooden chess set designs to choose from and a fair choice of plastic chess sets usually used in schools and chess clubs worldwide. The main wood used to carve and turn a chess set is Boxwood. Boxwood is almost always used for the lighter pieces. The darker materials used varies for example- Ebony, Sandalwood, Padouk, Rosewood, Sheesham make very attractive counterparts to Boxwood. The most expensive and somewhat restricted is Sandalwood.

Making a chess set is somewhat considered to be a masterful art, indeed not many understand the process and labour intensive procedure to make just a single set! Some of our sets in the luxury category take up to and over 40 hours to complete! For example, the work a carver has to undertake from choosing the dried wood to completing a single chess knight piece.