Puzzling

I come from a family of jigsaw puzzlers, at least on the distaff side. My mother was famous for doing puzzles, and if we were hard up for a gift idea, there was always a puzzle or two to be had from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When any of us were in Worcester visiting, as often as not we spent some time doing a puzzle. (That or playing no-holds-barred Canasta.) My mother built up quite a collection over the years. Regretfully, after she died, we donated them to the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop. 

I say regretfully because her daughters and granddaughters have all become puzzlers, and at my sister Kath's on the Cape, there is always a puzzle going.

Not that we ever stopped being puzzlers. 

In my first post-college apartment, I had a couple of glued puzzles (Saturday Evening Post or Collier's covers from the 1930's) framed as "art work." 

And at one point in the way back, we all rented a house on a lake outside Worcester. One day, when only Trish and I were there, we began doing one of my mother's arty puzzles. Renoir's Dance at Bougival, I believe. 

The house was in a lovely spot, but very isolated. Nothing around but trees and ominous noises. So Trish and I found ourselves, in the middle of a dark and stormy (and totes scary) night, working that puzzle. Fortunately, we had some spotlights that Kath - wise to the ways of rental cottages - had brought along. 

Anyway, there's always a puzzle going at the Cape. Kath and Trish are both very good at jigsaw puzzles. Trish's daughter Molly always throws in and does some of the puzzling, but she's not as dogged and fanatic as her mother or aunt. Let alone her cousin Caroline, who is the family champeen.

I'm not as good (or as dogged and fanatic) as I used to be. I need a TON of light, and my eyes get tired pretty easily. My back stiffens up from all that leaning over. Still, I enjoy spending a few minutes, letting out a yelp of triumph every time a piece or two fits in.

We all still like fine art puzzles. New Yorker covers. Flowers. Landscapes. Animals.

Every once in a while, someone picks up a puzzle at the puzzle store in P'town - hope it's still there - and these are often "collection" puzzles, like this Santa one.

The worst one in that genre was a collage of desserts, each one more nauseating than the other. Even those of us with a sweet tooth were hard put to pick one out that we'd actually eat. There was one sickly green confection that looked straight out of Peter Pan. You know, when Captain Hook plotted to get rid of Peter and the lost boys by poisoning a cake.

 

To cook a cake quite large

And fill each layer in between

With icing mixed with poison

Til it turns a tempting green

We'll place it near the house

Just where the boys are sure to come

And being greedy they won't care to

Question such a plum

The boys who have no mother sweet

No one to show them their mistake

Won't know it's dangerous to eat

So damp and rich a cake-

And so before the winking of an eye

Those boys will eat that poison cake

And one by one they'll die-

I can't call Kath and check on what exactly the puzzle confection was, because that puzzle is long gone. After we've done them a couple of times - and for some puzzles, it's not even a couple of times: it's one-and-done - Kath donates them to a thrift store in Wellfleet. Or one of us takes it home.

I have one such puzzle sitting here,  a New Yorker cover, "Summer Vacation" (August 18, 1934). Any day now, I'll get moving on it.

. 

We buy decent quality puzzles: the pictures are clear, the pieces don't get spongy, the picture doesn't peel off the cardboard backing. But we don't go in for investment puzzles either.

I had actually not heard of such a thing until the other day, when I saw an article in the Boston Globe on a Vermont company called Stave Puzzles, which "specializes in bespoke cherry-backed wooden puzzles priced from $150 to a cool $6,000 or more."

Not that I'd pay that much anyway, but I went over to take a look at Stave, and I didn't find anything for $150. They may well have some cheap-o puzzles for sale, but the cheapest one I came across cost - gulp - a whopping $295.

What I did find was a lot of beautiful puzzles, and plenty that I found sort of 'meh'. And most of the ones I liked cost over $1K.

For Stave, the pandemic has been very good for business. 

Folks are closed in, bored, looking for something to do. They're making sourdough bread. They're zooming. And they're doing puzzles. Including expensive ones. 

What are they paying for?

Stave Puzzles are handmade and made-to-order. Each one is hand-drawn by one of the many artists Stave works with from around the world. Some are based on photos supplied by customers — representing, say, a pet or the family home. Hundreds of others feature images in dozens of categories — including animals, architecture, people, seasons, magazine covers, and museum art...

Each puzzle is meticulously hand-cut, one piece at a time, by a blade no wider than an eyelash. The pieces are then sanded, polished to shine, and placed inside a thick signature blue-and-green golden-embossed box.

Puzzles are available at different degrees of difficulty: traditional, trick, teaser, tormentor. And - get this - there's no picture of what the end result is on that blue-and-green golden-embossed box. Which is, I understand, how puzzles used to roll when they were first invented. People had to figure out the puzzle with little more than a clue, like "mountain scene." Which would make puzzling life pretty difficult for those of us who pick up a piece and try to figure out where it goes by scrutinizing the picture on the cover of the box.

Of course, puzzlers have the recourse of printing off a nice color version of the puzzle picture. Which I'm guessing 99.99% of Stave's customers do. But if you got one as a gift from a meanie, I suppose they could hold back the critical information like what's it a puzzle of. 

Stave puzzles, even when I don't like the art work, are, indeed, things of beauty. I wouldn't pay $1,046 for this one of old Fenway. 

But I wouldn't say 'no' if someone gave it to me. 

Custom puzzles, by the way, can set you back $10K. 

The story of how Stave came into business is interesting. 

Back in 1970, Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbets were laid off from the computer company where they worked. They wanted to remake themselves and their careers and started a cardboard game and puzzle company.  A couple of years later, Richardson ran into a wooden puzzle fan who told him that he paid $300 for a puzzle. 

“I sat up and saluted!” Richardson recalled. “We were getting $3 for our cardboard puzzles.”

Back in Vermont, Richardson’s father-in-law gave him an old scroll saw. Tibbetts and Richardson set out to see “if we could make these fancy puzzles” and cater “to the Rolls-Royce crowd.”

They eventually took out six ads in The New Yorker. The week after the first ad ran, they received a check for $2,400 from a customer buying all eight of their $300 puzzles, Richardson said.

With the New Yorker ad, they found their market. And the number of New Yorker covers in their catalog pretty much confirms things. 

Anyway, nice to learn about this little piece of interesting business, even if it's a puzzle to me that someone would spend $1,046 for a puzzle.