A small chess set with a king size of only 5 cm in the French Régence style made of ivory, one side natural, the other side stained in bright red. The set came in a fitted box laid out with reddish brown satin and was presumably made around 1930. The outside of the lid is imprinted with "Lewis Le Bouvier", which most likely was the name of the original owner. However, so far I could not find out anything about him.

The interesting part is an imprint on the inside of the lid, which reads "Delaire, 4. Rue des Pyramides, Paris". This indicated that the set was made for and sold by Henri Delaire, who distributed chess equipment under the aforementioned address in Paris. Henri Delaire was not only a simple trader in chess equipment, but one of the key figures in Frech chess in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in Paris' 3rd District on 15 May, 1860 and soon became what Rachel Syme in The New Yorker called "a Parisian chess dynamo" (cf. Rachel Syme, Making Peace With a Precious Chess Set, The New Yorker, July 13, 2022). He was founder and long time president of the Parisian Chess Club "Cercle Magenta", which was established in 1888 and was renamed "Cercle Philidor" in 1895. In 1903, Delaire organised the first French amateur chess championship in Arcachon, in which he also participated. From 1908 onwards, he became the third editor of the French chess magazine "Le Stratégie", which was established in 1867 by Jean Preti and continued by his son Numa Preti in 1881. The magazine was notoriously underfunded and was kept alive by Delaire, who invested large sums of his private money in this project of his. A significant amount of this money must have been made in Delaire's shop in 4. Rue des Pyramides in Paris, where he sold chess equipment, including luxurious and exclusive chess sets like the one shown here. He also wrote several books on chess, including Le Traité - Manuel des Echecs in 1911 and Les Echecs Modernes, the two volumes of which were first published in 1914 and 1924. His greatest achievement, however, was the founding of the French Chess Association (Fédération Française des Echecs) on 19 March, 1921. Henri Delaire passed away during the Second World War on 27 September, 1941. 

The photos shown here include two pictures of Delaire. The first is showing Delaire (on the left side) in a chess match against Matthieu Lemarchand. The picture was published in an article in Le Monde Moderne 1902 about the abovementioned chess club "Cercle Philidor". The second picture is an obituary published by the Féderation Française des Echecs in their Newsletter of April 1942, honoring the achievements of Delaire for chess in France.