"The Art of Chess Pieces", Dr Isaac Linder

The name of Dr. Isaac Linder is well known owing to his numerous works on the history of chess.
Born in November 20, 1920 he began to play chess in his early childhood. Great Lasker gave his praise to the 14-year-old schoolboy.
Passion for chess and a professional approach of the historian (Dr. Linder is a graduate of the historian faculty of Moscow University) mark his books "First Russian Chess Master A.D.Petrov" (1952,1955), "Artist of Chess I.S.Shumov" (1959), "At the Putset of Chess Culture" (1967) and "First Russian Chess Masters" (1979). In these monographs many archival materials, unearthed and studies by the author, were used.
A fundamental approach also marks his book "Chess in Rus" published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1064 and then reissued in 1975. Original research into the chess etymology and chess realities in bylinas (Russian epic) was also done by the author. His book "Chess in Old Russia" was published in English in Switzerland in 1979.
This book is the result of Dr. Linder's thirty-year-long research into the history of chess pieces and its interrelation with world culture.

For about one and a half thousand years, from the time of emergence of chess up to now, people have been trying to render the true charm of this wise game through the chess pieces they made, displaying outstanding talent, fantasy and resourcefulness. The miniature chessmen have always been genuine works of art no matter what material they were made of (ivory or silver, mother-of-pearl or porcelain), and whether they reflected people's life at different times or were of abstract character.
The author of the album is a well-known Russian historian Dr. Isaac Linder who describes in a captivating manner the stages of evolution of figurative and abstract chess pieces from medieval to modern forms. This description is based on a thorough study of private collections and museum pieces. The riches of the art of chess pieces are shown in its entirety, including such archaeological finds as the ancient chess pieces from Afrasiab (seventh to eighth centuries, Uzbekistan), unique porcelain, ivory and metal sets of all times and lands.
The album, containing 250 black-and-white and colour illustrations, is a good gift to chess collectors and all lovers of this ancient game.