Table Of ContentORIGAMI
CHESS
CATS vs. DOGS
T M P
EXT BY ARY ACKARD
O M R D
RIGAMI ODELS BY OMÁN ÍAZ
D M N
IAGRAMS BY ARCIO OGUCHI
CONTENTS
HISTORY OF CHESS
PAPER DESIGNS
MEET THE PLAYERS
SYMBOLS, BASIC FOLDS AND BASES
THE PAWN
DACHSHUND
PERSIAN
THE ROOK
CHOW CHOW
NORWEGIAN FOREST CAT
THE KNIGHT
WHIPPET
AMERICAN SHORTHAIR
THE BISHOP
BEAGLE
SIAMESE
THE QUEEN
WEIMARANER
TURKISH ANGORA
THE KING
GERMAN SHEPHERD
DEVON REX
PEDESTAL
LET’S PLAY!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
HISTORY OF CHESS
“CHESS IS THE GYMNASIUM
OF THE MIND.”
—Blaise Pascal
The game of chess has been around for thousands of years. It thrives even today in this
fast-paced, technology-driven world. According to pollsters, chess players constitute one
of the largest communities on the planet. Worldwide, it is estimated that over 600 million
people play chess regularly. Chess develops and helps maintain focus and concentration,
and steadies the mind. For many, it serves as a tranquil retreat from the ever-present
drumbeat of too much information.
Who were the first chess players? Theories abound. There are those who believe that chess
had its origins in an Egyptian board game called senet. In this game, players moved pawns
shaped like spools and cones across a board divided into squares. The game came
equipped with four “throw sticks” that acted as dice to indicate how many spaces a player
could advance. For ancient Egyptians, the game symbolized the struggle between good
and evil and as such, a successful player was believed to be under the protection of the
gods.
Chess has been called the game of kings. The Egyptian form was no exception. A senet
game was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, and a depiction of the game was
discovered on the wall of the tomb of Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramses II (1304–1237
BCE).
Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertari playing senet.
Other chess historians trace the game’s origins to chaturanga, a sixth-century strategy
game played in India. Chaturanga’s playing pieces and the 8 x 8 board they moved on
closely resembled those employed in modern-day chess. A way in which chaturanga
differed from chess, however, is that chaturanga players threw dice to advance their pieces
over the board.
In Sanscrit, chaturanga means “of four parts” and refers to the four military units that
made up an army during that time: infantry, horse cavalry, elephants, and chariots. In the
game, these army units were represented by the following playing pieces: infantry foot
soldier (pawn), horse cavalry (knight), elephant (bishop), and chariot (rook). There were
two additional playing pieces included as well—the raja (king) and king’s counsellor
(ancestor of the queen)—that would have utilized the four military units to conquer their
opponents.
The game of chaturanga also bore similarities to chess in the way the pieces moved. For
example, the king was allowed to move a single square at a time in any direction, while
the horse moved the same way a knight does today.
“CHESS IS A SEA IN WHICH A GNAT MAY DRINK AND AN ELEPHANT MAY BATHE.”
—Indian proverb
Carved relief of Ancient Indian army
Ancient bas-relief of the Persian soldiers of Persepolis, Iran
“IF A RULER DOES NOT UNDERSTAND CHESS, HOW CAN HE RULE OVER A KINGDOM?”
—Persian King Khusros
By the late seventh century, the Persian Empire had fallen to Muslim armies. Under
Muslim rule, chess pieces became abstract to conform to religious sanctions against
depicting the human image. By this time, chaturanga had spread throughout the area that
is now Iran. Persian nobles renamed the game shatranj, and quickly adopted the game for
their own amusement. Most chess scholars believe that the word “chess” is derived from
shah, the Persian word for king, and that “checkmate” comes from the phrase shah mat, or
the “the king is dead.”
Persian royalty found the game to be a useful tool for educating young princes in the art of
war. It was much safer to learn military strategy by playing chess than actually engaging
in battle.
As time went on, the game took hold among the general population. The best Persian
players became the world’s first chess celebrities. Enthusiasts devoured books written by
these chess masters to learn new openings and strategies. Some of these ancient
manuscripts survive to this day.
“CHESS IS IN ITS ESSENCE A GAME, IN ITS FORM AN ART, AND IN ITS EXECUTION A
SCIENCE.”
—Baron Tassilo
The newly expanded Muslim Empire became a multi-cultural dynasty, trading with
Europe, India, China, and Africa. Through contact with other cultures, the game of
shatranj spread northward to Algiers, and then to Spain, and by the year 1000 CE, it had
become popular throughout Europe. It is in these Western countries that chess pieces
became less abstract and figurative once more.
There can be no better example of the newly evolved style than the Lewis Chessmen set—
each figure with its own eccentrically evocative charm. Scholars have determined that the
pieces had been fashioned in Trondheim, Norway, between 1150 and 1200 CE.
No one knows how the chess pieces ended up on the Isle of Lewis—the largest of the
Hebrides Islands of Scotland—but a farmer discovered them there in 1832. As the story
goes, the farmer had been taking a walk through dunes along the beach when he spied the
tip of a stone chest poking through the sand. After digging it up, imagine his surprise
when he beheld four sets of ivory chess pieces—each with its own somewhat sad,
bewildered, or comical expression. Scholars believe that the chess sets had once been
carried on a merchant ship on its regular trade route between Norway and Ireland. What
happened to the ship and its cargo is anyone’s guess.
The Lewis Chessman set made in Norway between 1150 and 1200 CE
The game of chess can be viewed as an allegory for society during the Middle Ages.
Landowners who lived in castles are represented by the rook.
In the 1300s and 1400s the game of chess underwent changes in Europe that would make
it recognizable to modern-day chess players. Europeans gave chess pieces names that are
still used today, they devised the option of moving the pawn two squares at a time, and
adopted a new way for a pawn to capture another pawn called “en passant.” They
introduced bishops, and most notably, replaced the king’s counsellor piece with the queen.
Those who found that change too hard to accept began to refer derisively to the game as
“Mad Queen’s Chess.” Soon afterward, castling was invented to bolster the king. The new
move made the king stronger and harder to capture by moving it away from the center of
the board.
The game of chess can be viewed as an allegory for society during the Middle Ages— a
system that was based on the relationships among the nobility, the military, the church,
and the peasant class. Each playing piece represented one aspect of feudal society: the
nobility was represented by the king and queen, the military by the knight, the church by
