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How the chess set came about.

William Holden worked with stainless steel creating fountains in a studio when he got distracted to make a paper towel holder for his home. After a lot of trial and error and prototypes he applied for some patents and eventually shifted into product development.

On a trip around the world that began in New Zealand, William met Tom and played some chess. The two became good friends and traveled and played more. You could say that William searched the world for a good travel chess set. He found none that suitably stored the pieces between or during play. He and his brother Charlie came up with something completely new.

After a dozen or more prototypes, hundreds of 3-D engineering drawings, we finally produced the bamboo chess set. We decided to make it slightly larger than your average travel set to be more desirable for play at home. The portability makes it great for short trips to the park, a coffee shop or over to a friend's house. We hope the board will help bring some people back to this great game and help form new friendships like it did for William.

Email: info@holdenart.com