Author Archives: Alan Power

Amber, otherwise known as ‘Russian Gold’ (Latin electrum, from Ancient Greek elektron speaking of a ‘beaming sun’).  Some time a while back (the weeks and months all roll into one these days) I was very kindly gifted an excellent little-known tome from the well-respected U.S. chess aficionado, Chuck Grau.  The wonderfully illustrated (and for me, […]

…as the old Monty Python skit (from The Holy Grail, 1975) kinda said. But instead of bringing out the ‘dead,’ in this month’s Chessay we’ll be bringing out the ‘lead.’ In this case from a late 1950s ‘Grandmaster’ or ‘GM’ set. A classic design that dominated Soviet chess tournaments (in several variations) well into the […]

Chips and busted bases – chippititus! Sorrowfully, an all-too-common ailment throughout the chess collecting community and the subject of this month’s (somewhat delayed) Chessay. Whether a set is made from wood, bone or carbolite, an unexpected tumble from the playing table or an over-enthusiastic ker-thud! during a game of blitz and <<< BOOM!! >>> Shift […]

THE 2019 ‘GOLD SIGNATURE’ SERIES A few enquires have been made of late as to how many of our sets carry the iridescent gold ‘power’ signature on the base of the kings distinguishing the body of work completed in 2019 (as opposed to the iridescent ‘silver’ signature of 2020). Quite by chance, the answer to […]

… and that is indeed the question of this month’s Chessay! Just when does a vintage chess set qualify for an evening on the worktable with the stripper? Or more specifically, exactly which factors determine whether a set is eligible to be slathered in noxious chemicals and feel the wrath of the wire brush, sandpaper […]

It’s in unusual circumstances that I sit here today and write this month’s Chessay. Toronto, where we are based, is virtually in lock-down due to the pandemic caused by the C-19 virus that is running rampant through so many parts of the world. What would normally be a day of celebration for me as I […]

For the February Chessay I offer the following snippet from a side-project I have been working on for the past ten years or so – TEN YEARS OR SO! Where does the time go? I very much doubt that it will ever get finished, but taking a leaf out of the book of the great […]

Yesterday, for want of a change, I decided to take a break from the wood and restore a beautiful old English chess set handmade from bone that’s been waiting patiently in the wings for well over a year now. As you can see from Pic 1, overall the pieces are in excellent condition considering their […]

As collectors, we all have vintage chess sets that would be absolutely perfect if only they had just a little more weight or the original felt bases were … well, a little less on the ‘vintage’ side. Understandably, adding weight, or more specifically, boring a hole into the base of a chess piece can be […]

GULAG: Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitenie-trudovykh LAGere (Chief Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps); A prison system based on forced manual labour. It was established under the rule of Lenin and peaked during the Stalin era. The last of 476 Russian gulags (Camp Perm-36, Solovki) was closed in 1987. Vladimir Petrov, mentioned below, died in a coal-mining gulag […]