ZAG-zaw Picture puzzles

Jigsaw puzzles

     Jigsaw puzzles have been an interesting, educational, challenging, frustrating and rewarding hobby since around 1760. In 1762, during the reign of Louis XV of France, a promoter named Dumas pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces. These 'dissected' maps became the first jigsaw puzzles. About the same time an English printer, John Spilsbury pasted a map of Britain onto a thin mahogany backing and then cut precisely along the border of each English county. These two men on opposite sides of the channel opened two important markets; the new middle-class consumers, hungry for knowledge and status and the stern, cheerless English school of the time.

Spilsbury lived in an era when the ability to read maps was a social accomplishment - the mark of a gentleman. The ultimate puzzle mania was the Grand Tour, an immense affair showing a complete map of Europe in minute detail. The game in this case was to use puzzle pieces to learn the entire geography of Europe by heart - countries, kingdoms, duchies, counties, free cities, towns, rivers and all. Knowing your maps gave the sort of status that having your own home page on the Web does today.

ZAG ZAW Picture Puzzles, or jigsaw puzzles, as they later became known were at that time the domain of the well off, with a hand cut puzzle costing more than the average weekly wage. They were wooden, cut on the edge of each colour or object and the pieces did not interlock; there was no picture. Pictures were considered to take the surprise and entertainment out of the hobby.
          

June Morning  c1910

This wonderful early wooden jigsaw puzzle measures 538mm x 327mm. and has 433 pieces. The puzzle is in very good condition; the painting is of a rural area with a lake or river with cattle. I believe it to be c1910. A great example of an early puzzle with pieces not interlocking. There is no picture to copy as was usual at the time. A typical landscape of the period of a beautiful English scene. Larger pieces, matt finish, one false move and start again

Advances in technology allowed jigsaws to be mass produced using a die-cut method on cardboard which resulted in a greater variety of pictures, but all but wiped out the traditional ‘puzzle making’ art. It also meant that, for a long time, all pieces of all puzzles were essentially the same shape. And there were pictures to guide the puzzler!
Today there is resurgence in the old art of wooden jigsaw puzzle making, harking back to the 1930's perhaps, and it is possible to buy hand cut and beautifully made wooden puzzles. Sometimes specially made for individuals, but also from 'jigsaw artists' they are still more expensive and with less variety than the puzzles we are used to now. Many are quite magnificent. (We have a number of these puzzles for sale. Look for Wentworth Wooden Puzzles.) Weather in wood or cardboard there are many puzzles with challenging shapes and ‘whimsy’s or ‘silhouette’ pieces, in the shape of an animal, plant or similar, and ‘straight edge’ pieces mixed in as inner pieces just as in those early puzzles. (These were an artist’s ‘signature’ in times gone by). Today puzzles come in all sorts of guises, buildings, balls and shapes for instance.