Amritsar Artisans Craft Chess Sets for World Championships

In a workshop tucked away in a bustling lane of Amritsar, Panjab, artisans have quietly been shaping global chess history. The handcrafted chess set used in the recent World Chess Championship finals, won by India’s 18-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh against Ding Liren in Singapore, was made by Chopra Chess, a family-run business that has been supplying sets for the championship since 2012. The connection between a humble Panjabi workshop and the glitzy championship arena overseas highlights a globalized trade in which Amritsar’s legacy as a chess manufacturing hub—rooted in the 19th-century ivory trade and now continued through intricate wood-carving—comes into play. Among the skilled craftsmen is Baljit Singh, one of only two specialists in the world entrusted to carve the knights, the most challenging and detailed chess piece. He and his team produce about 40 knights a week. The wood—boxwood, red padauk, acacia, and ebony—is aged for months before cutting, polishing, and hand-carving. Interestingly, chess itself traces its roots back to Panjab, where the game is believed to have originated. First mentioned in Sanskrit texts written at the time of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya around 3-4 AD, chess was known as Chaturanga. Ancient chess sets from Panjab have been found all over central Asia. Many years later, Mir Sultan Khan, born in 1903 in British India’s Panjab, emerged as a self-taught Panjabi chess prodigy. Khan won the All India Chess Championship in 1928, and he also defeated top players like Jose Raul Capablanca in the Chess Olympiads. The International Chess Federation honored him as Asia’s first Grandmaster.