The Congo Quares Bench by Atelier Astúa looks like an attractive, but fairly ordinary bench most of the time. But when you want to play chess, you just have to hit the switch and all the pieces will appear beside the board.
Once they're on the board, you can continue sitting at either side of the bench until the game is over and cleanup is as easy as putting the pieces back in their respective holes in the bench.
The bench is not only a great way to store your chess set when it's not in use, it's also a great way to avoid losing your pieces since it is so easy to put them away and keep track of them all.
Check out more pictures over at Homes and Hues: A Stylish Bench and Chess Set In One
Nice design concept but clearly not done by chess players. The board is rotated 90 degrees from what it should be - there should always be a white square bottom right corner for each player, this one has dark squares (follow the link to verify if necessary). Also when you follow the link the pieces are set up incorrectly. The queens should both start on a square of their own colour so they are opposite each other. This is not the case in the images shown and each queen is opposite the opposing king which may seem a small difference to a non chess player but would completely alter the game beginnings. You could use the table widthways of course with another couple of seats either side, but that kind of defeats the objectives of the all-in-one design. This would really annoy me so they have lost a potential customer.
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