When shopping around for chess sets or individual chess pieces, one runs into a plethora of options. One of the great variations is that of the material from which chess pieces are made. One can choose from plastic, metal, wood, marble, or alabaster. While each have their advantages and disadvantages, some of the most stunning and elegant are made of alabaster, also known as gypsum, a soft hydrous sulfate of calcium.

Alabaster is the term often ascribed to gypsum, but it could also mean calcite alabaster, which is the alabaster referred to in many historical texts and documents. The main difference between the calcite and the gypsum is hardness—gypsum is soft enough to be scratched with a fingernail, while the calcite is harder and can only be scratched by a knife or rougher instrument. A naturally-occurring mineral, alabaster is translucent and varies in color as well as in exact hardness, depending on the water to mineral ratio it contains. Adding to alabaster’s appeal are irregular veins that sometimes occur, often making it resemble marble.

Mineral alabaster is found in several parts of England, including in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Nottinghamshire. Alabaster is also found in the Italian region of Tuscany, Florence being the center of the European alabaster industry. Here the mineral is commonly found in deposits of limestone in the Volterra district.

During the medieval period alabaster became both an important local industry in Nottinghamshire as well as a main export for England; popular alabaster items at this time included religious icons and altarpieces. Yet alabaster figures into history further back than the fifteenth century, however. The ancient Egyptians used alabaster for various religious vessels, and alabaster sculptures from Mesopotamia have been dated back to the third century B.C. Indeed, from the start of civilization alabaster has played an important role, serving as a pliable natural resource well suited for religious and artistic purposes. This trend of creating beauty from raw gypsum mineral has carried into the 21st century.

The process of making chess pieces from alabaster is a careful and delicate one. The mineral, which occurs in shades of pink, yellow, and white, is extracted from the earth in oval-shaped deposits. The extraction process must be conducted with some caution, because alabaster is easily bruised. These bruises are nearly impossible to remove once they appear, so it’s important to operate with care so as to render the maximum amount of alabaster available for artistic carving.

Raw alabaster is cut into round shapes, then smoothed into discs. The next step is determined by the type of product being made. For example, if a vase is to be made of alabaster, it will go to a lathe and turned until the vase is created. Also, it can be chiseled into various decorative pieces. For chess pieces, it is often turned on a lathe then carved by hand in a manner similar to wood. Alabaster is soft and is carved with care, often set on sand bags which absorb the vibrations from dragging and scraping tools across the alabaster’s surface. Since the alabaster is so soft, the carving process often involves fine chisels and fine-grit sandpaper. Afterward, alabaster pieces are polished to shine then often dyed. Thanks to its porous nature, alabaster can be immersed in any color dye to take on its hue.

This process is carried out for each chess piece—meaning it’s repeated 32 times for both sides of a chess set. The intricate extraction and rendering required by gypsum alabaster’s delicate nature in part contributes to its greater price tag than other types of chess pieces. Yet the artistry involved is clear by gazing upon any alabaster chess set—regardless of color, the pieces gleam and shine, indicative of the delicate material of which they are composed and the complex process by which they are produced.

When looking to purchase chess pieces, one could choose plastic, cheap, resilient, and easily-toted. Or one could choose wood pieces in dark ebony, light boxwood, or cherry rosewood. Yet another option is metal or brass, heavy and solid. Yet all these types, while possessing their own unique attributes and advantages to chess play, don’t offer what alabaster does. Alabaster is light, soft, and beautiful, attractive in any color and finely carved from king to pawn. Though it’s true alabaster is breakable—a downside to its fragile nature—the smooth physical shaping and refined beauty of alabaster chess pieces are worth the extra care with one should handle them. It’s also true that with most things you get what you pay for, and the extra dollars spent on alabaster will be well worth it.

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