Classic Chess Set by Peter Ganine for Ganine

OtherThe Original SeriesStrange New Worlds

Sep 10

1961
No longer in production

Peter Ganine was a Georgian-American sculptor and industrial designer, best know for his modern chess sets, all of which are now collector’s items. He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1900 before moving to the U.S. in 1931 on a scholarship from the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The pieces from his Classic set (model no. 1494) were used for the iconic tri-dimensional chessboards of Star Trek: The Original Series. The board itself was constructed for the series. Actual rules for Star Trek’s version of three-dimensional chess weren’t developed until 1975, when artist (and Trek enthusiast) Franz Joseph introduced starting positions and basic gameplay mechanics in the “Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual.” Even then, a complete rules standard wasn’t established until a year later, by Andrew Bartmess, who published the booklet, “The Federation Standard Tri-D Chess Rules.”

While Ganine’s Classic set is ubiquitous to The Original Series, subsequent Star Trek series used a variety of different chess pieces for their tri-dimensional chess boards. Until Strange New Worlds, that is, which revived the Ganine set, as pictured here in the season 3 finale, “New Life and New Civilizations.” I actually suspect that the Classic set used in Strange New Worlds is a 3D-printed replica, given the rarity of the original and availability of 3D patterns of this set online, but I don’t know for sure.

References:

Hughes, Edan Milton. Artists in California: 1786-1940. San Francisco: Hughes Publishing Company, 1986. Page 170. https://archive.org/details/artistsincalifor0000hugh/.
Dansk the Night Away. “Vintage Chessmen by Peter Ganine.” October 12, 2011.
https://danskthenightaway.blogspot.com/2011/10/vintage-chessmen-by-peter-ganine.html.
Joseph, Franz. Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975. Pages 151-52.
https://archive.org/details/star-trek-star-fleet-technical-manual/.
Bartmess, Andrew. “Tri-D Chess Rules by the Original Author: The Federation Standard 5.0 Tridimensional Chess Rules.” Yestercade, 2019.
https://yestercade.net/tactical.htm.