{"product_id":"coffee-table-book-of-chess-paperback","title":"Coffee Table Book of: Chess (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCoffee Table Book of: Chess is a large-format coffee table book about chess, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most show the pieces seen close; others show the board, the game and the places where it is played.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt opens with the Staunton pieces in boxwood and ebony: a queen crowned with small points, a bishop with its notched, mitre-shaped head, a rook with its ring of battlements, and a king and queen side by side. Then the knight: a boxwood knight in profile, its mane cut in fine ridges, and a boxwood knight and an ebony knight nose to nose.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the board: an inlaid board of pale maple and dark walnut seen from directly above, an old board with its squares faded and softened, and a round games table in a sunlit room. Then medieval chessmen in yellowed walrus ivory: a crowned king on a carved throne, a seated queen in a pleated robe, a helmeted knight on a stocky horse and a bishop in a tall mitre.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the Islamic world and India: abstract pieces of smooth pale stone, a rook with a deep V-shaped cleft in its top, carved Indian pieces shaped as elephants, camels and horses, and a chess elephant painted deep red with gold flowers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen glass, stone and metal: a cut-glass king splitting the light into small rainbows, white and black marble on a terrace above a garden, green onyx and creamy alabaster, and brass and pewter in warm lamplight. Then the game in progress: a lone pawn at the front of the board, a castled king, a pawn on the far row with a queen standing just off the board, and a king lying on its side.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen sets at rest and on the road: a set in its open box, its pieces in compartments lined with green baize, a folding travel board with pegged pieces, and a cloth bag spilling pieces onto a roll-up board.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToward the end come giant sets outdoors, in an empty park, under snow and on a stone terrace above the sea, and then the workshop: rough-turned pawns among curls of pale shavings, unfinished knights on a carver's bench, a half-finished king held in an old lathe, and blanks of black ebony and pale boxwood.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShort notes run through the book. They are about chess rather than about the pictures: why the knight is widely held to be the hardest piece to make, where the word chess comes from, how much better White scores than Black, and how tall a tournament king stands.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrinted in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cedar Pine Editions","offers":[{"title":"Perfect Bound","offer_id":68148166820144,"sku":"9671456004426","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0262\/2357\/5085\/files\/9671456004426.jpg?v=1792626757","url":"https:\/\/www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk\/products\/coffee-table-book-of-chess-paperback","provider":"The Great British Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}