Clockwork Game: The Illustrious Career of a Chess-Playing Automaton

If the chess set looks a little odd, it’s because the design that most people associate with chess, the Staunton Set, wouldn’t be created for another eighty years or so. The only close-up we have of The Turk’s Chess pieces is from this engraving by Racknitz, from 1789 — and so I took my primary design from that image, but blended it slightly with the Staunton set to make the individual pieces more immediately recognizable to modern readers. Here’s a great page with lots of information on early European chess sets — it looks like The Turk’s pieces were based on the “Selenus” design, given the Racknitz image.