This is a walrus ivory chess piece of a king made in Germany, probably Cologne. Cologne workshops had a long tradition of carving in walrus ivory, and chess pieces were still being made in the city in the second half of the fourteenth century in a style only moderately evolved from the present set. The motif of the king hooking his hand under his mantle-cord indicates monarchical authority and judicious contemplation and is seen on several representations, both sculpted and painted, from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards. The carving is derived from a series of seated kings on the West Tower of the Minster at Freiburg.
By 1200 chess was a popular game in Europe, having been brought from India via the Middle East in the early medieval period. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the playing of chess became established as a courtly – and courting – pastime par excellance, as numerous references to it in written Romances, illustrations in manuscripts and depictions on works of art attest.
By the beginning of the Gothic period the principal pieces had already taken human form. The castle though does not appear to have taken the form of a building until the sixteenth century, and is most often represented as a mounted figure not unlike a knight. It is no9teworthy that hardly any chessboards have survived. The overwhelming majority of chess pieces were made in non-Parisian workshops and the most active workshops were based further north, in Scandinavia, Germany and England

The game of chess has from its inception carried chivalric and military associations. These qualities made the game a suitable intellectual pastime for the elite of Renaissance Europe. Luxury chess boards and finely carved chess pieces became common possessions in palaces from Italy to England and as today, color was used to distinguish between opposing chessmen.