This Dollhouse Furniture Chess Set Is Living in My Head Rent

By Sydney Gore

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Before I begin gushing about this charming chess set, I have a confession: I don't know how to play the game. It's not that I’ve never been interested in learning, I was just never the type of kid that found enjoyment out of spending several hours hunched over a board game—I vaguely remember using the line "It's called a BORED game for a reason" on my parents on a handful of occasions. Maybe this can be blamed on the fact that I’m an only child, though perhaps if I’d had a games table, things would have turned out differently?

Prior to the checkerboard wave hitting interiors, I sort of had a change of heart about the print due in part to my mother's influence with her MacKenzie-Childs obsession. I was also one of those Queen's Gambit bingers, and while Anya Taylor-Joy was absolutely serving, I was mostly in it for the impeccable set design. But back to the chess set: It's one of those classic pieces that has stood the test of time. For those that don't have enough space to allocate toward a game room, adding a chess set can fill that void, and it can also put the finishing touch to an otherwise ordinary corner of a room. It invites people to let their guard down (at least until the match begins), focus on the now, and have a little fun.

Modern Chess Set on auction at Phillips.

So imagine my reaction when I was informally introduced to Rachel Whiteread's Modern Chess Set from 2005. The floral patchwork and colored linoleum board is covered in 32 pieces of vintage dollhouse furniture replicas that pull inspiration from the 1950s. I didn't even know about this chess set until the gallerist Jacqueline Sullivan recently posted it on Instagram, but I was instantly fascinated by it. Jacqueline has been a longtime admirer of Whiteread's work, noting how it was the "Place (Village)" installation for the V&A Children's Museum that enamored her.

"[Whiteread's] preoccupation with notions of domesticity, memory, nostalgia, and gender roles and women's work has always been thought-provoking for me," Jacqueline explains in an email. "Her Modern Chess Set is an exploration of all of those ideals; what fascinates me is that chess is ultimately a game of strategy, a war between two participants."

Although Whiteread is widely known as an avid dollhouse collector, this set is more than an ode to nostalgia—it's a critique of traditional gender roles in the home, a place that has historically served as "a site of work for women and of leisure for men." Playing into gender politics, the miniatures represent the everyday utilities and appliances assigned to women (sinks, stoves, ironing boards, buckets, wash tubs, wastebaskets) and men (armchairs, electric radiators, televisions) in this environment. It's the ultimate battle of the sexes packaged in a 9 1/4-by-31 3/4-by-16 1/8-inch crate.

A full view of Whiteread's masterpiece with all of the pieces mid unboxing.

"The way in which she embodies chess pieces as symbols of domesticity and perhaps the war that wages between traditional and expected gender roles is brilliant," Jacqueline adds. "Whiteread joins a roster of women contemporary artists addressing the format of chess to explore these ideas, and it's a format I find really provocative because it's a game, which feels pleasurable but it's also so much more."

Christie's sold one of the sets in a 2019 auction for £10,000, and another recently went for £11,340 at Phillips. (Whiteread only made seven sets, and there were three artist's proofs.) It's a rare collector's item, which is why Jacqueline didn't think twice about submitting a bid at auction recently. I don't have the funds to make such a grand investment, but Modern Chess Set certainly has me thinking about what to do with the remaining pieces from the dollhouse that my late grandfather handmade for me during my childhood—would it be wrong to do my own interpretation? Even as my mind continues to be domesticated, there will always be a space for Whiteread's potent cultural commentaries to occupy.