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Location
Weatherford, Oklahoma
Document Type
Presentation
Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-54.htm
Start Date
26-7-2026 2:30 PM
End Date
26-7-2026 3:20 PM
Description
The response to Tolkien’s work is amazing in variety and depth. Flieger and others note The Lord of the Rings invites a participatory response from the reader. For a number of us this results in a lifelong engagement, from academic pursuits such as this conference to fan creations. Chess is a wonderful example of the creative reaction to Tolkien’s work. There are as many as 97 Middle-earth related chess sets. This includes different editions of the same set. Dr. Graeme Anthony produced ~32 editions of his War of the Ring set. As with most responses to Tolkien inspired work the style varies greatly. The sets created range from niche level Chess set makers to commercial firms to individual handmade efforts.
There are quite a range of Tolkien characters chosen to portray the chess pieces; as well as the chess piece a given character portrays e.g., Gollum as a Pawn to a Bishop or Aragorn from Pawn to King. The sets attest to the creativity of Tolkien and the portrayal/adaptation of his characters by the set creators. The 50 sets in my collection are destined for the Mythopoeic Society Archive at SWOSU or a (proposed) Tolkien Museum, Library, and Memorial Arboretum.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Middle-earth Inspired Chess Sets
Weatherford, Oklahoma
The response to Tolkien’s work is amazing in variety and depth. Flieger and others note The Lord of the Rings invites a participatory response from the reader. For a number of us this results in a lifelong engagement, from academic pursuits such as this conference to fan creations. Chess is a wonderful example of the creative reaction to Tolkien’s work. There are as many as 97 Middle-earth related chess sets. This includes different editions of the same set. Dr. Graeme Anthony produced ~32 editions of his War of the Ring set. As with most responses to Tolkien inspired work the style varies greatly. The sets created range from niche level Chess set makers to commercial firms to individual handmade efforts.
There are quite a range of Tolkien characters chosen to portray the chess pieces; as well as the chess piece a given character portrays e.g., Gollum as a Pawn to a Bishop or Aragorn from Pawn to King. The sets attest to the creativity of Tolkien and the portrayal/adaptation of his characters by the set creators. The 50 sets in my collection are destined for the Mythopoeic Society Archive at SWOSU or a (proposed) Tolkien Museum, Library, and Memorial Arboretum.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc54/schedule/29
