Steve S.

I am familiar with the original Henri Chavet chess sets from seeing them in use at the 1979 Montreal Tournament of the Stars, which I personally attended, and in the 1995 World Chess Championship (Anand and Kasparov). I own a smaller original Chavet set with 3.5 inch kings. This Royal Chess Mall reproduction uses better quality wood than my genuine Chavet set and the workmanship is actually higher quality than my original Chavet set. It arrived at my Canadian address in only about one week after ordering. The conformity to the original design seems to be very high. The only slight comments are that the heads of the pawns are a little too fat, and the bases of the kings are slightly smaller than those of the Queen's. They should be exactly the same size. They should also be flatter in profile. But these are very small differences. The dark pieces are very nicely finished in a mat dark oxblood red-brown very close to the original, and actually nicer than the original in my opinion. The condistency of the wood turning and carving is very high, demonstrating excellent workmanship. The pieces are perfectly weighted - just enough but not too heavy, as a lot of modern sets are. I like this. So...this set is an excellent buy if you like the Chavet style pieces. Congratulation to the artisans who produced this set.
In photos the Royal Chess Mall pieces are on the left, with original Chavet pieces on the right. The original pieces are a smaller size, and a slightly different design.