Ivory carved Thai chess set from the 1960s. Each piece is standing atop a carved puzzle ball with loose additional balls nested inside of them, the larger the piece, the more spheres it is standing on.
He passed away a few years ago, and we found this stashed away among other super interesting things he acquired during his 30 years of military service which took him all over the world from WWII through Vietnam.
The board itself is made of mahogany for the white squares and ebony for black. The whole thing looks and feels so delicate that you don’t even want to touch it. The puzzle spheres for each piece are astonishing. The king is standing atop a sphere with 4 loose spheres nested inside. It’s mind-bending to think of how they were able to carve those. I love the elephants for rooks. Overall, it’s visually stunning and an incredible reminder of the incredible service my grandfather gave to our country.