This One Goes Out to Our Queens ❤

May 19, 2026 • Cool Chess Game • Custom Chess Set • Family Game Night • Handmade Chess Set • Mother's Day Chess • Unique Chess Boards

My relationship with Chess: The sets I craft, and the woman who started it all.

With Mother's Day still fresh on my mind, I realize I take a lot of things for granted. A prime example would be the daily game of Chess I play with my mom. A game that we play, of course, on a handmade Chess set. The pieces are worn from years of abuse; some had been misplaced by curious grandchildren for a time, some have been nibbled on by a dog or two, but at the moment they are all accounted for.

I was seven years old when Mom taught me the basics, after which she promptly beat me with a Scholar's Mate. I've since learned how to counter that particular opening, but she still manages to frustrate me from time-to-time with her aggressive style of play. It was her appreciation for all things handmade that inspired my siblings and I to make her this particular Chess set for Christmas over 15 years ago, knowing that she'd love the rustic pieces and the bark still clinging to their bases.

Once our woodcraft started finding customers, this old set became a prototype.

Today, my Chess sets have become a little more elegant.

When newcomers play Chess on our old set, it takes them a few minutes to get used to the different pieces. Nowadays I've adopted a more familiar style for the shapes, reminiscent of the Staunton design, while still featuring the raw bark bases that make my sets unique.

Knights have traditionally been the hallmark of a Chess craftsman, owing to the fact that they can't be lathe-turned from templates and must be individually hand-carved. While my own design is simple, it's still surprisingly difficult to achieve the elegantly-simple yet recognizable look I'm going for.

From raw tree to a powerful Queen, the double-meaning of my title for this article is now complete! And yes, I do think of my mom with every Queen I turn.

This is a new box design I recently made for a custom order, and I really like the way it turned out. I wanted to incorporate round branches with bark somehow, to match the pieces inside. The corner pegs ended up being a great way to do that.

All told, it takes about 20 minutes to produce each piece. There's nothing quite as satisfying as staging a game after the whole set is complete!

I missed Mother's Day by a week with this post, but I don't think there's ever a bad time to show a little appreciation for the Queens in our lives, and this recent build was the perfect opportunity to that! I hope you all had a lovely week, and I would highly recommend getting out your mom's favorite game and spending a moment with her, if that opportunity presents itself. ❤️ -Andrew

If you find yourself in need of said game, we do happen to have a few to choose from :o)

Take a gander

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