Got my hands on another old wooden puzzle, are you surprised? It’s a lovely image, but there were so many missing pieces! I went into this knowing there were only 499 pieces, but I mistakenly assumed that meant there was only one missing piece. I was wrong of course. This puzzle apparently started out with 510 pieces, not 500. Still, mom and I had a good time putting it together and that’s what counts.
There is such beautiful detail in the artwork, the hands seem almost photo quality. It was a beautiful puzzle and mom and I enjoyed it even with the many missing pieces.
EBL 1920 – I wish I knew if that was in reference to the date the puzzle was cut or if it’s when the image was painted. It could be both, actually.
I’ve got one more old puzzle yet to assemble and one more in the queue, but unless I find something amazing I’m done with the vintage/antique puzzles. Not because this one had lots of missing pieces, but because either fortunately or unfortunately (I’m not sure which), the municipal building puzzle was so amazing, and such fantastic quality that I feel that everything else is a bit of a letdown. Even if it’s great quality it still isn’t as good. I was so lucky to find that puzzle; it’s a one of a kind, exceptionally well made, and mom and I enjoyed the journey of putting it together so much – it just can’t be matched or duplicated. Nothing even really comes close.
I’ve told hubby to stop sneakily buying these old puzzles on eBay. He purchased a few for me as a surprise, it’s very sweet but I’d prefer it if he didn’t do that anymore. I think I’d rather be happy we had the experience and fun of assembling a very rare and wonderful antique than be let down by the not up to snuff quality of lesser (but still lovely) puzzles.
Mom and I are currently working on another vintage puzzle, this one is much smaller but it’s beautifully cut and much easier to figure out what it is – there’s a wedding!
It’s a Pastime puzzle, like the municipal building we assembled, and the figurals are familiar looking as well. Like the first mystery, we don’t know what the finished image will be, and we don’t know if it’s complete – but that’s not really the point of putting this puzzle together. The point is enjoying the puzzle and spending time together enjoying each other’s company. 💖
It’s a little less difficult than our big puzzle, there is much more color to assist with finding pieces, but just as much color line cutting – as you can tell by the bride’s veil, we have no idea what’s behind her! We revel in the challenge of it, and every time we find a connection we feel a little better about our aging brains. 👵
Municipal Bldg. New York – Pastime Puzzles? – 1600 pieces
Cue the fanfare and fireworks, the Puzzle Posse has completed The Challenge of 2019! The Mystery Box Puzzle I gave to mom for Christmas is finally finished! 🎇👵👵🎇
It took us almost 7 weeks, but partly because we only wanted to work on it together; we had to wait for days when we were both available and able to puzzle. There were many days with no progress made at all, but we loved all the time we got to spend together. ❤
I purchased this from eBay, it was just a random box of vintage wooden puzzle pieces. I had no idea how many puzzles were in the box or if any of them were complete. One of the absolute best puzzle purchases ever! It was given to mom for Christmas last year, the gift wasn’t the actual puzzle, but the time we would be able to spend with each other assembling it – and if I had spent 10 times as much money as I did it still would have been worth it (but I’m certainly happy that I didn’t have to empty my wallet quite that much 😉 ).
It’s a fantastic image – and was extremely challenging; not only the busyness of the bottom portion of the puzzle, but the deviousness of the color line cutting. They weren’t playing around back in the days of hand cut wooden puzzles! Sometimes you could rely on the image to help you with assembly, but where one thing meets another – watch out! We loved it❣
From what little research I was able to do, we believe this is a Pastime Puzzle manufactured by Parker Brothers. Two of the pieces had the word Parker written on the back, and some of the pieces look almost exactly like examples of pieces produced by Parker Brothers for their Pastime Puzzles shown in The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History by Anne D. Williams. It’s our moderately educated guess. If you have any information about this puzzle, I’d love to hear from you!
The puzzle was missing only 2 pieces out of 1600, which isn’t bad at all. Sure, it’s a tiny bit of a disappointment, but it takes nothing away from our enjoyment of the assembly. We believe this was manufactured in the early 1900’s, so it’s most likely at least around 80 years old. The swastika shaped piece in the sky portion makes us think it most likely pre-dates World War II, so that’s our best guesstimate. Missing two pieces doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal when you consider how old it is and how many total pieces there are.
We wanted to get a good close up of the amazing color line cuts to show you, it’s something, isn’t it? Unless you’ve worked with this type of cutting before it’s difficult to explain how this messes with your mind. Your eyes are telling you that the piece that should fit next to something should be a certain shade or color, but you absolutely cannot trust that! Bright sidewalk next to the dark green of the grass with the cuts made almost exactly where the colors meet – it’s an incredibly strenuous mental workout!
Here is just another example of the color line cutting, and the puff of white smoke from that smokestack kept us guessing until almost the very end! You can see here where the hand coloring has been added – and it looks as if it was painted directly onto the puzzle image itself. The green of the grass and trees was enhanced, as were the 3 American flags, the cupola of one of the smaller buildings, and the white smoke. This is a beautifully crafted puzzle, stunning in it’s complexity and quality!
This part had us faked out, we were certain it should have been at the top of the puzzle somewhere, and spent too much time looking for where we thought it should have fit in. Again, with no help from an image our brains were tricking us – it’s in the lower third of the image, nowhere near the top. We had to override our puzzling instincts and just go where the piece shapes took us. 🙂
Here’s my adorable mom with “the best Christmas present she’s ever gotten”. Her words, not mine. ☺ You can tell from this picture how very large this puzzle is, approximately 30 x 40 inches. Wow. The Posse has done it again!
From this…
To this…
In 48 days! With no box, picture, or a clue as to what it might be I think we did a pretty damn good job! I have no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves now, mom says we have to find another big project. It’s her turn to find us something awesome!
A new puzzle company for me, and it was pretty good. It’s difficult to tell how the fit is, because there are so many whimsy pieces and not everything connects. The image is kind of bland for me, but it was interesting to work with all the different shapes.
The piece shapes are pretty obvious in the finished image, but I almost think that’s a good thing here because it’s cool to see all the different shapes of the whimsy pieces. There were the usual dog and cat, etc., but some were really different! There’s a grand piano, a peacock, several letters, and a faucet to name just a few. 🙂
The pieces are a good thickness and very sturdy. Again, I can’t say much about the fit other than to say that the pieces that did connect seemed to fit together well. The image reproduction seemed a bit fuzzy, but that may have been the artwork itself. It was a little difficult for me to tell for sure. I try to err on the side of positivity, so we’ll say that it was the artwork and not the reproduction that was fuzzy.
I enjoyed assembling this puzzle and would be happy to try more puzzles from this company. I think for me the whimsy pieces are a fun change of pace once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to do them all the time. I’m just not a fan of pieces that don’t connect, it seems as though you’re always having to adjust everything. Again, that’s just my personal preference – if you enjoy them, rock on!
My Jigsaw Journal 