Peter Ganine Chess Sets: The Sculptor and His Designs

The designer

Peter Ganine was a sculptor and ceramicist who is remembered mainly for his chess sets. He was born on 11 October 1900 in Tiflis, today’s Tbilisi, then part of the Russian Empire, and died in Hollywood on 11 August 1974 at the age of 73. Sources describe him as Georgian-Russian-American, Russian-American or Georgian-American, which fits a life that crossed several borders.

He began his art studies in Tiflis. His path to the United States was unusual: he also spent five years as a trader in the Belgian Congo. In 1931 he came to the United States on a scholarship to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and in 1932 he settled in Hollywood. During the Second World War he worked as an aircraft patternmaker.

A sculptor’s career before chess

Ganine’s exhibition record shows a working ceramic sculptor. In 1938 he showed in a group exhibition of the California Art Club. In 1939 his work appeared at the Golden Gate International Exposition and at the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego. In 1940 he won first prize at the National Ceramic Exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts for a piece called Baby Centaur. In January 1942 he was named Artist of the Month and had a solo show at the Los Angeles County Museum, and in 1944 he took part in a group show of the Society for Sanity in Art at the same museum. In 1960 he appeared in a group show at the W. and J. Sloane Petite Galerie in Beverly Hills.

The chess sets

Two designs carry his name in collectors’ lists. The earlier is Superba Gothic, dated to about the 1930s. The later is the Classic set of 1961. A third design, mentioned without a name in Wikipedia’s article, gave the chessmen human characteristics. The article describes it as the first major change in the design of chess sets in more than a century.

The Classic set owes much of its fame to television. According to Wikipedia, its pieces were used in Star Trek: The Original Series as part of the tri-dimensional chess set.

What the Star Trek board is

The tri-dimensional chess seen on screen is a game with its own rules. The Strong Museum of Play, which holds a 1995 Franklin Mint version of the board donated by David Howe in 2015, describes the basics: White starts on the lowest level and Black on the highest, a piece may finish its move or capture on the square one level directly above or below it if its path is not blocked, and four extra attack boards can be moved on a player’s turn and optionally turned through 180 degrees. The Museum’s post does not mention Ganine, and a Franklin Mint replica is a different object from an original Ganine set, so collectors treat the sets as separate things.

Collecting notes

The sources available say little about materials or production runs, and the claims made for individual pieces in dealer listings cannot be checked from them. What the sources do fix are the dates of the designs: the Gothic design comes from about the 1930s and the Classic design from 1961. Wikipedia also records that Ganine’s stylized animal figures and ceramics were often patented and mass-produced in plastic, including a toy whale and a toy duck, so his chess work sits within a wider practice of designing for production.

For wider reading on how chess sets and the game’s image developed, start at the chess history hub. Another article in the same section is on Israel Zilber, and the page on David Levy covers a pioneer of computer chess.

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