Leuchars stamped set, c1851

There’s rare, and then there’s rare.

And then there’s this set.

An unbelievable set.

An “I can’t quite describe it” set.

So, let’s start with the basics. The king is stamped “Leuchars, 38 Piccadilly”. And already we run into one of the reasons this set resists easy description. Because the king looks, for all the world, like a queen from a Staunton set.

Which makes describing it a feat of mental gymnastics — a little like that familiar challenge: words for colours flashing on a screen, red as red, blue as blue, green as green… and then BANG — “red” written in vivid green, and you cannot help but say the wrong thing. That’s what this queen—dang! I mean king—does to you.

The kings in this set, which look like queens, are rather lovely (confusing, yes — but lovely nonetheless), crowned with something like a ring of flower petals.

The queens, meanwhile, are unlike anything I’ve seen before. They call to mind the Sovereign's Orb from the UK’s Crown Jewels. When I acquired the set, the small ball finial was missing; to my eye, that seemed the most likely original form, so I made one to fit. It could, of course, have been a tiny jewel and cross, in the manner of the Orb — but the aperture felt far too slight to have held anything more than a modest ball, akin to the bishops’ knops.

Ah yes — the bishops. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice once observed.
“The exploded bishops,” as my friend Adam dubbed them — and the name has stuck. Exploded they remain.

Another absurdity. Another delight.

They have very much grown on me. After the initial shock, I fell rather in love with them. Perhaps there is even a distant nod to the bishop from The Game and Playe of the Chesse, printed by William Caxton in 1475.

Now to the knights — beautifully carved, poised atop slender columns, hinting at an upright set. I have seen something like them before… but more on that in a moment.

The rooks, with their five crisp merlons, sit comfortably within the set — again echoing that upright sensibility.

The pawns are reassuringly Staunton in spirit, though with exceptionally broad, stable bases. And yes — heavily weighted. Those wide bases do double duty: visual balance above, substantial lead below.

Did someone say lead weights?

Here’s the nub of it. The weights.

All but one pawn retain their original baize pads. One does not — and that small loss proved a great revelation. Beneath it, the lead weight is secured with a pronged tool, just as one finds in sets made by Jaques of London.

Oh.

So — was this a set commissioned by Leuchars from Jaques?

That is my strong suspicion. Not a Jaques set as such, but a Jaques-made Leuchars set, executed to Leuchars’ own specification.

And suddenly the knights feel more familiar — reminiscent of known Jaques forms, perhaps even akin to one illustrated in Jaques and British Chess Company Chess Sets by Sir Alan Fersht (see the Edinburgh upright, Figure 59).

I nearly forgot the box.

A classic Victorian slide-top — very much in the Jaques manner, and quite possibly their work. While Leuchars were famed for dressing cases, it seems entirely plausible the finished set was supplied to them boxed.

And inside — beneath the lid — the final flourish: a William Leuchars label.

That it survives at all is remarkable. The lid itself has, at some point, been in two — perhaps three — pieces, still held together by ancient tape which (alas) partly obscures the label. But the label is there.

And it is unmistakably William Leuchars — placing the set between 1847 and 1867, after he succeeded his mother Lucy (who herself had taken over following the death of her husband, James Leuchars, in 1822). There, among the listed wares, appear the words “chess men”, alongside the Royal Patent.

So — back to that baffling beginning. That queen—I mean, king.

Why would Leuchars commission a set in which the most vital piece appears to be… the wrong one?

Or perhaps not the wrong one.

Perhaps the right one.

My theory? With their Royal Patent, Leuchars may have sought to honour Queen Victoria — elevating the relatively new Staunton queen to the place of greatest prominence.

And would this have been done at just any time?

Perhaps. But this is no ordinary set.

So I will venture a date: around the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, at the Crystal Palace — that great moment of Victorian confidence and display. The Queen herself visited repeatedly — more than forty times, it is said — and the sense of imperial identity was unmistakable.

In that context, she was more than sovereign — she was becoming something larger: a symbol, a centre, perhaps even the emerging “Mother of Empire”.

So perhaps, in this most curious of sets, the “king” is Victoria herself — and the “queen”, crowned with orb-like form, represents her power.

I did say it was an unbelievable set.

*addendum: The final four images show the queens with the small ball finials removed. These were a minimal, reversible addition made to explore the set’s possible original appearance; as ever, views differ on whether such interventions are appropriate.