Many thanks to Scott for permission to post these pictures. Here are his comments on how he made them.

"These pictures were modeled and rendered in Persistance of Vision ie. POV-Ray or POV. To me the chess set is a traditional subject for raytracing right up there with chrome balls and teapots. This chessboard was actually inspired by another chessboard on this site. I don't recall the name but it's the one with the blue sky above and green below. It's a sample file that came with an old raytracer (I think it was a front end for POV) and was the first item I ever raytraced some years ago. By that I mean I loaded it up and rendered it, I didn't create it. I thought I'd try to get something a little more realistic looking and these images were the result. I recently rendered the one bottom left for a magazine cover and a 4000 x 3000 pixel render took ~60 hours on a Pentium 233."