First, The Knight

"It's always the knight, isn't it?" A commentator said that about one of the creations in the chess section of Thingverse. So, that's where I decided to start.

With most chess sets, the knight is the fancy piece. It's the one where the craftsman demonstrates his carving skill. Thingverse has some excellent examples of this.

I've always admired the chess sets from the Modernist Movement of the 1920s and '30s. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Bauhaus, and Berliner¹ come to mind. I also like the knight in the Zagreb set.²

So that's my starting point: Create a Modernist knight inspired by the elegant Zagreb and the spare simplicity of Man Ray, in particular his 1962 set.³ With special attention to printing problems, eliminating overhang and such, and without transgressing copyright or licensing laws.

This is what I've come up with:

Figure 1 Modernist Zagreb knight.

The dimensions are based on a "tournament approved" Staunton set, modified as I see fit. I want the king to be 3.75 inch tall with a 1.5 inch base. That makes the knight 2.5 inch tall with a 1.25 inch base. I'll be working in millimeters. Rounded off to the nearest whole mm, the knight is 64mm x 32mm.  (63mm in the drawing is a slip of the pencil.)

The pedestal is hollow to allow filling it with a do it yourself weight.

Footnotes.
 

1Link to Berliner set for sale at All the King's Men: http://www.atkmchesssets.com/products/berliner-chess-set.html

2Link to Zagreb set for sale at Wholesale Chess: http://www.wholesalechess.com/shop/chess-pieces/wood-chess-pieces/zagreb-chess-pieces (This is not an exact copy of the set Bobby Fischer played in Dubrovnik 1959.)

3Link to Man Ray licensed sales site: http://www.manray-photo.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1770&osCsid=9214cabdab5bc997fb886525801bee88