This looks so natural and unforced that I can't imagine why it hasn't been done before. The most hess-related tessellation cI've seen so far, though, is three artists who've tessellated chess knights.
This is an idea that's been lurking and kicking around in my head for at least a year.
I've made a few preliminary sketches. This piece, too, is not the final form but is at least worth looking at.
Eventually I'll produce something with a bit more trickiness in perspective, with the castles (rooks) a bit narrower at the base, the knights' ears a little wider.
I hope to produce this as an actual sculpture either as a wall hanging that can be taken down from the wall and used for a game of chess, or as a traveler's chess set that opens like a book so that the pieces can be stored inside.
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Sta.sh
You wrote "Escher's prints are excellent examples of perfect fine-tuning of initial raw ideas, and could be a source of inspiration."
Really? I've always thought that the majority of Escher's tessellations are quite stylized, with too-straight outlines, except along the margins where they become far more realistically rendered-- but no longer tessellate.
The chess pieces, though-- they are by definition stylized, since 1849 when the Staunton "standard" was created and popularized. They can be produced on a lathe with barely any other cutting, and lack much detail. Only the knight has a lot of detail, typically.
This chess tessellation is undoubtedly going to look very much like
a) a Staunton (standard competition style) chess set,
b) one of those simplified stylizes Escher tessellations,
c) one of Nicolas Alain's stylized tessellations.
There's not much I can do about that, unless I get silly and make the designs break apart along the edges, becoming realistic castles, knights, and kings.
BTW, I've got a few improvements in mind:
a) make the king the tallest, and the only piece with a cross on top.
b) make the queen more like a standard Staunton piece, with a crown, dome, and ball on top.
Another option to consider is for example to only make the pieces of one color explicit, and let the pieces of the other color subtely appear in the background by carefully placing them on the chessboard. That, however, is easier said than done. I think you're best of trying out a few ideas, and subsequently working out the most promising directions in more detail.
Don't know about the bishop notch though. Maybe it's simply to make them stand out more from the other pieces.
I could morph them, of course. However, that would require an awfully long banner with a handful of transitional areas that wouldn't look like anything.
Still, it might be a fun theme for a coloring book in the form of a long banner frieze-- something kids could color in and then hang along the upper edge of their bedroom walls as a decoration. Using only chess pieces might be a bit boring to a child, though.
Another way to go would be to butt the friezes up against one another. I was even thinking it might be fun to have the chess pieces composed simply of the color opposite to the chessboard square beneath them. If a piece lay across the intersection of 2 or more tiles then the piece would be two colors.
The design would look more unified because of the close proximity of the chesspieces, but more of a visual puzzle because the chesspieces wouldn't be simply opaque objects.
Do either of these ideas appeal?
Later versions of this piece will have interior detail on the tile. This picture here is just a work in progress.