Designer Yasmin Sethi’s Through the Looking Glass chess set is pretty neat: each piece becomes translucent when it is lifted off the board, which severs a circuit and removes an illuminating light being shined up through the underside of the piece from below. In truth, it doesn’t have much to do with the Lewis Carroll novel, except for one perfect little touch: one white knight is turned upside down, referencing the White Knight Alice meets who “thinks better upside down.” A nice little nod to Through the Looking Glass’ obsession with enantiomorphism, I think… especially since the knight is the only piece asymmetrical enough to “flip” in any meaningful way.
Alice Chess Set [Yasmin Sethi]
Where did I just read about this..? could have crossed my heart and sworn it was here on BB…
Anyway, as cool as this is, it probably hasn’t been actually made yet, given the less-than-convincing photoshopping on the product page. The devil is in the details with these fancy materials. That said, it’s a pretty cool idea.
On the other hand, when you promote a pawn, it’s nice to be able to tell the removed pieces apart from one another.