Oswaldo Chinchilla
Chunky Chess Set in Red & Blue
Dimensions: 8.5" x 8.5" board; pieces are 1.5" h
Inscription on the bottom of the board:
"Made by hand for the Museum for Art in Wood, O. E. Chinchilla, New Haven, CT, October 2026
From the Artist:
The Chunky chess boards are built from solid hardwood, walnut paired with either cherry or maple, with steel or wood pieces. They began with a love of the game and its strategy, and with the realization that a chess set is an unusually good design exercise: what other game asks you to invent a full cast of pieces that speak to one another and eventually meet head-on? Artists from Alexander Calder to Isamu Noguchi have taken up the same challenge. Here, the pieces are designed to work through proximity, sitting close enough that they read almost as a wall, shifting and reforming as they advance and claim territory across the board. Each board is laminated from 4x4 lengths, folded together much like taffy, then cut and reglued until all 64 squares emerge. Every board and piece is made and finished by hand.
