mfb said:
We'll also need Asian figures?
They have been around a long time. Very long and quite common in fact. As you would expect considering where the game came from. My very first game was with an ivory set clearly Chinese which I still have, bought by my father in Aden sometime about 1934.
There used to to be several patterns, one was called the 'French', another 'English'. However there were all sorts of other fantasies. I found them fascinating and I used aged 16 or so to wish I could afford to buy examples. It passed but I did later buy a 'Waterloo' lead soldiers set, with Napoleon and Wellington as Kings, etc., but it was stolen.
When in the nineteenth century chess became formalised with players with world reputations who met each other in matches with a following (before the nineteenth century I think there were chess books, e.g. by one Philidor* but few recorded games) then there was a need for standardisation, of the rules and the peices, and the standard 'Staunton' pattern was settled on and later specified by the official international rulebook. Staunton was the leading player of the 1840's, and a prime mover in starting institutionalised championships.
Today I learned he was not the designer of the standard familiar pieces named after him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staunton_chess_set
Despite a fascination of other patterns I think at the end of the day the Staunton has a kind of perfection. Somehow, especially with nice polished wood, harmonious, balanced, relaxing, not distracting from the actual game, which is in the head. I think if you want an illustration of what the word 'hieractic' means, they are it.
* He is remembered for a particular checkmate called 'Philidor's legacy' which I have occasionally been able to bring off by a knight against a smothered King, usually involving a Queen sacrifice.
