One of Jaques most famous introductions was the Staunton Chess Set. Jaques had been making chess pieces for years, which was no surprise given their origins and expertise as wood and ivory turners. However, in 1849, a unique collaboration resulted in Jaques producing a new chess set which was a vast improvement on the previous design of pieces. The design registration document of March 1849 was submitted by a man called Nathaniel Cooke. The chess set was widely publicised and promoted by the newspaper The Illustrated London News.  It has been claimed that Cooke was an architect. In fact he was a publisher and he had established this newspaper with his colleague Herbert Ingram in 1842.  They had employed the chess expert Howard Staunton to write a regular chess column in their newspaper in 1845. Staunton had recognised, and written about, the need to update the design of chess pieces as early as 1841. In a unique collaboration these men worked with Jaques, the foremost wood and ivory turners,  as the key manufacturer of the new pieces. The craftsmanship needed to create the unique pieces, most notably the Knight, with its distinctive carving was Jaques specialty. Designed, created and then launched in 1849, a company called Leuchars created a casket for this chess set in carton-pierre. Jaques put the signature of Howard Staunton on every set to ensure its authenticity as a Jaques product. These two examples differ slightly. One, J453, dates from 1855 and has Staunton pieces in boxwood and ivory pieces. The other, J452, actually contains bone English pattern chessmen and the carton-pierre box has an inscription, “To The Rev. H. J. Wilcox A slight remembrance From a few Hanwell Friends, March 1878”. Much has been written about the people involved in the Staunton chess sets and their collaboration and relationships. A fuller article on this, setting out the key information, will be found under Game Stories.