The Bauhaus Chess Set
Chess is a facsinating game with endless variations. The first World Champion of the game was Howard Staunton. He was an English chess master who beat all comers between 1843-1851. The London company John Jaques popularised the ebony and boxwood chess set you see below and named it after the then world champion. The "Staunton" design patented in 1849 has become the standard pattern for tournament chess.
BAUHAUS SCHOOL
Walter Gropius has had a profound influence on modern architecture. He and his fellow architects founded the Bauhaus School in 1919 and went about designing modern buildings that let nature in instead of blocking it out. This was done by using curtains of glass as walls instead of bricks. In 1922 Walter Gropius invited Josef Hartwig to head the sculpture department at the Bauhaus School in Weimar.
Josef Hartwig was a graduate of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and had spent 18 years building up his reputation as a stone mason and sculptor. He was head of the sculpture department from 1922 until 1925.
