duchamp

About a month ago Bryan Cera invited me to print a copy of Marcel Duchamp’s favorite hand-carved chess set. The set had been lost to the ages, but he and Scott Kildall have resurrected it. It sounded like a fun project and it’s always interesting to collaborate with people I admire.

Scott mentioned that I had a unique method of printing the pieces in parts and reassembled them in his post about the materiality of the project. I also painted my set with metallic silver paint to give it a unique look.

Along the way, Patrick Lichty also printed a set, and Frankie Flood (being the Master of Metal) had to go way overboard and cast them in bronze!

Anyway, my set is finally done, and I finally took photos, which you can see here. I actually spent a fair amount of time trying to replicate the shot of the original Duchamp set, getting the spacing and angles right, matching the lighting, and it’s close, but not exact. (See the top photo to compare.)

Of course some of the shots I did were just because I wanted to experiment. The hot pink, and to some degree the black, show the reflective quality of the pieces, which is pretty neat.

(You can view high resolution versions of each shot on Flickr, just click on the photos above.)

Note: September 2015 Update! What Happened to the Readymake: Duchamp Chess Pieces?” and What Happened to the Readymake: Duchamp Chess Pieces?

Recently my pal Bryan Cera posted about resurrecting Marcel Duchamp’s hand-carved chess set, which is a project he’s working on with Scott Kildall.

Bryan shot me an email and asked if I’d be interested in printing a set as well. To be honest, most of the stuff I print on my RepRap is meant to be functional parts, and they typically don’t turn out pretty, but hey, I’m an art lover, and I like collaborative projects.

Bryan mentioned that the set should be printable even on a “homebrew” 3D printer, but personally, I hate printing with support, so I try to not use it. I took the pawn and split it in half and then printed it and glued it together with a bit of Acetone.

Oh, I also painted the pawn with metallic silver paint. You can see that this is not a super-high quality print, but I’m OK with that. I sort of like the way the lines appear on this piece.

I also printed the rook. I split this one by removing the top for printing and then reattaching it.

I did the same with the bishop, and will probably do this with the rest of the pieces (and maybe re-do the pawn this way, or maybe do the opposite and re-do all the pieces the same way I did the pawn!)

Here’s the bishop being assembled. Acetone melts the plastic, so I just dabbed a bit onto the two surfaces and then hold things together for a few hours with some rubber bands. (Luckily the bishop has a rubber band-holding slot!)

It’s been a fun project so far, and the only reason I’ve not finished the entire set is that I’ve been traveling for work the last few weeks. Once I’ve got all the pieces, I’ll capture some nice images of the set.

And yes, the knight is going to be a fun challenge!

(Thanks to Bryan and Scott for including me in this project!)