Saar TrikTrak is the smallest house in this collection, and for many players the one they would most like to own.
Fifty years in Tallinn
Andrus Saar carved wood for fifty years, mostly alone, in a workshop in Tallinn. Alongside the sculpture he built boards, a few each year, and over the decades those boards earned the kind of reputation that travels much further than the man who makes them. He is a collector of old boards himself, and his designs go back to the great salon boards of tric-trac: heavy, inlaid, built to be handed down rather than replaced.
Solid wood, gemstone checkers
A Saar board is solid wood throughout, chosen, joined and finished by hand. The checkers are polished gemstone set in gold-leaf rims, so that a full game sounds unlike any other board in the room. Each board is named after its wood and given an edition number, in the way a print or a casting would be. The range is deliberately small. Saar would rather make a handful of boards properly than forty quickly.
From the Gulf to Tehran
His most devoted buyers are collectors across the Arab world and the Gulf, where wooden boards are part of the culture of the game and where a board made to last a lifetime is understood without explanation. Closer to home, a Tehran carpet dealer with a private collection of antique boards keeps a Saar among them, which is about as close as that particular collector comes to a recommendation.
Requested, not ordered
A bespoke Saar board is not ordered so much as requested. The waiting list for a commissioned piece can run to three years, and Saar does not shorten it for anybody. He is also no longer young. Many of the boards that change hands today are bought as collector's pieces, and some, quietly, as investments, by people who expect a Saar to be worth more in ten years than it is now. Saar has no opinion on this and would not share it if he had.
At the board
He still plays, exactly and without fuss, and he plays well. He says very little at the board and nothing about the workshop. If you ask him directly what makes his boards different, he will probably answer, because he has never told a lie about anything. The answer will be short.
