Guide Price: $800
Power sits square on a board. Sixteen decisions staring back at you. Strategy carved into wood. You either command it—or you leave it to someone who will.
The Covetable Chess Luxe Set isn’t a toy. It’s a declaration. A Dada-Surrealist icon reborn with German precision, Italian artistry, and enough presence to stop a room cold.
Here’s why this isn’t “just” a chess set. It’s a weaponized heirloom.
Man Ray, the son of a Russian immigrant tailor, Philadelphia-born and Brooklyn-raised, broke rules for sport. In 1920, while the world was still hungover from tradition, he slammed modernism onto 64 squares. Abstract geometry. Zero fluff. Only meaning. Only dominance. He designed a set that stripped chess to its symbols and rebuilt it as sculpture you can fight with.
Every piece talks.
– The King is a pyramid. Unapologetic. Ancient. Authority distilled to a perfect point. You don’t argue with pyramids—you orbit them.
– The Queen is a cone. Regal like medieval headgear, sleek like a missile. Direction plus velocity. She moves—everything changes.
– The Bishop is a flagon. A nod to the clergy who stirred exotic liqueurs and ideas. Curved. Elegant. Subtle power. The kind that catches you from the side.
– The Knight is a violin scroll. Music and motion. Beauty with bite. Crafted by an Italian violin maker who cuts these scrolls as if Stradivari’s ghost were watching.
– The pawns? As tall as the rooks, almost as volumetrically robust as higher ranks. A message encoded in wood: in modern play, pawns decide wars. Underestimate them and you lose. Period.
Original Man Ray sets are unicorns—when one surfaces, it rips auctions for tens to hundreds of thousands. Why? Because he wasn’t decorating; he was detonating conventions. And because he lived modestly while seeing five decades ahead. He wanted a set that was simple, direct, modern, and accessible. Timeless form. No wasted gesture.
This Luxe Set carries that DNA. Not a “tribute.” A licensed resurrection, built the hard way.
– Germany handles the beech wood bodies. Solid. Balanced. Engineered with the kind of quiet obsession only old-world craftsmen still practice.
– Italy gives you those knights, individually sourced from a violin manufacturer with the tooling and touch to carve the scroll like a concertmaster’s signature.
– The finish? Silky, exacting, ruthless in its standards. Pieces that feel like confidence in your hand.
You don’t dump that caliber onto a random checkerboard. The board itself was designed to match the Man Ray forms—solid beech, 15.75 inches square, clean lines, built under license with the Man Ray Trust. It’s not “a board.” It’s a stage. The lighting for your performance. The frame for your art of war.
Here’s the real flex this set delivers beyond aesthetics: it rewires how you think. Most sets scream hierarchy. Big kings, tiny pawns. Not here. When your pawns stand shoulder-to-shoulder with rooks, your brain recalibrates. You start spotting pawn storms, exchange sacrifices, dynamic imbalances. You see opportunity where other people see clutter. That’s not just chess insight. That’s life. That’s business. That’s every negotiation you’ve ever walked into and will ever win.
Display it and you’re making a statement: you study power. You collect culture. You appreciate vision. But then you actually play. You lock eyes with an opponent across minimalism that hits like a drumbeat. There’s no distraction. Just geometry and will.
Owning this set stacks value in three layers:
1) Cultural capital: Man Ray isn’t a fad. He’s one of the 20th century’s most innovative artists. His work sits in museums and in the private rooms of people who move markets.
2) Material reality: solid beech, German fit-and-finish, Italian violin-scroll knights—nobody can fake that blend of craft.
3) Strategic advantage: the design itself changes how you plan. Every game becomes a masterclass in clarity.
You want viral? Put this on your table and watch what happens. Conversations pause. Phones come out. People ask. You don’t brag. You educate. You tell the story—1920s modernism, Dada irreverence, surrealist symbolism. The immigrant grit. The licensed build. The violin-maker knight. The pawns with purpose. It’s the kind of narrative that makes luxury feel earned.
Let’s talk mindset. Tools matter. The pen you sign with, the timepiece you wear, the board you battle on—these aren’t ornaments. They’re commitments. They remind you to think long game. To train patience and ferocity at once. To stay cool while plotting five moves ahead. Every session on this set tightens your logic, sharpens your edge, and codifies one truth: control is taken, not given.
If you care about returns, remember this: original sets fetch eye-watering figures because the world pays for vision. This licensed recreation connects you to that same lineage of vision at a fraction of those auction fireworks, with the integrity of the Man Ray Trust behind it. That’s leverage.
This is the part where most people hesitate. They tab-switch. They “think about it.” Meanwhile, the people who understand power close. They collect. They don’t wait for permission.
Own the icon:
– Man Ray’s 1920 design, revived with respect and precision
– Under license with the Man Ray Trust
– Solid beech wood, 15.75-inch board
– Italian violin-scroll knights, German-crafted bodies
– Minimalist geometry with maximal meaning
– Pawns that stand tall—strategy redefined
Make your home a gallery. Make your matches a ritual. Make your guests wish they’d moved first.
The Covetable Chess Luxe Set isn’t for everyone. It’s for the ones who make decisions, who play the long game, who understand that style without substance is noise—and substance without style is invisible.
Take the square. Command the room. Checkmate on your terms.
Guide Price: $800
Power sits square on a board. Sixteen decisions staring back at you. Strategy carved into wood. You either command it—or you leave it to someone who will.
View 2
View 3
View 4
View 5
View 6
