Artist: Luis Alberto
This extraordinary chess set brings together two celebrated meteorites — Sikhote-Alin and Seymchan — transforming fragments of the cosmos into one of humanity’s oldest games of intellect and strategy.
One side is formed from complete Sikhote-Alin iron-nickel meteorite specimens, preserving their natural sculptural surfaces and distinctive regmaglypts — impressions created during their violent passage through Earth’s atmosphere. Sikhote-Alin fell over Siberia on 12 February 1947, in one of the most spectacular witnessed meteorite falls of the twentieth century.
Opposing them are sliced and etched specimens of Seymchan pallasite, discovered in the Magadan region of eastern Russia. Their exposed interiors reveal an extraordinary crystalline architecture formed beyond Earth — a structure measured not in human history, but in planetary time.
The pieces stand upon a chessboard hand-cut from smoky quartz and clear quartz, bringing terrestrial crystal and extraterrestrial matter onto the same field.
But this is more than a chess set.
Chess is a game built upon the human belief that every move can be calculated. A meteorite belongs to another order entirely — shaped by forces, distances and time beyond human control.
We make our move. The Universe makes its own.
Materials: Sikhote-Alin iron-nickel meteorite; Seymchan pallasite; smoky quartz; clear quartz
Largest pieces: approximately 4½ in (11.4 cm) high
Board: 19 × 19 in (48.3 × 48.3 cm)
Artist: Luis Alberto
This extraordinary chess set brings together two celebrated meteorites — Sikhote-Alin and Seymchan — transforming fragments of the cosmos into one of humanity’s oldest games of intellect and strategy.
One side is formed from complete Sikhote-Alin iron-nickel meteorite specimens, preserving their natural sculptural surfaces and distinctive regmaglypts — impressions created during their violent passage through Earth’s atmosphere. Sikhote-Alin fell over Siberia on 12 February 1947, in one of the most spectacular witnessed meteorite falls of the twentieth century.
Opposing them are sliced and etched specimens of Seymchan pallasite, discovered in the Magadan region of eastern Russia. Their exposed interiors reveal an extraordinary crystalline architecture formed beyond Earth — a structure measured not in human history, but in planetary time.
The pieces stand upon a chessboard hand-cut from smoky quartz and clear quartz, bringing terrestrial crystal and extraterrestrial matter onto the same field.
But this is more than a chess set.
Chess is a game built upon the human belief that every move can be calculated. A meteorite belongs to another order entirely — shaped by forces, distances and time beyond human control.
We make our move. The Universe makes its own.
Materials: Sikhote-Alin iron-nickel meteorite; Seymchan pallasite; smoky quartz; clear quartz
Largest pieces: approximately 4½ in (11.4 cm) high
Board: 19 × 19 in (48.3 × 48.3 cm)
Image 1 of 16
Image 2 of 16
Image 3 of 16
Image 4 of 16
Image 5 of 16
Image 6 of 16
Image 7 of 16
Image 8 of 16
Image 9 of 16
Image 10 of 16
Image 11 of 16
Image 12 of 16
Image 13 of 16
Image 14 of 16
Image 15 of 16
Image 16 of 16