Tag: 2022

Child with a Dove (1901), 2022-06-16

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An early Picasso from 1901, when the artist was only 20 years old. I’m afraid I’m not a fan of his later style, but I like this. The original, French, title is L’enfant au Pigeon.

Child with a Dove by Pablo Picasso, Art Stones, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 16, 2022.

I’ve written about some of this before, but I think now is a good opportunity to summarize all I’ve learned about the Ricordi Arte and Art Stones brands. Most of my information comes from various Facebook groups, but I’m fairly confident it is correct. For some things, I have personal experience (for quality and availability, mostly).

Ricordi Arte is an Italian brand that mostly does fine art puzzles. The puzzles themselves are glorious. The colours are vibrant (but usually not oversaturated) and the cut is a basic grid cut, but very precise. If you have a large area of the same colour, this is the cut you want. All in all, excellent quality.

Art Stones is (was?) the budget line of Ricordi Arte. Many vendors used to list Art Stones puzzles as Ricordi Arte, but there is no indication of the connection on the box. Sometimes Art Stones puzzles are of inferior quality (but still OK), and sometimes they’re just as good as Ricordi Arte puzzles (this was one of the good ones, but I’ve had one with extra pieces, for example). I also love the Art Stones boxes, because they are just big enough to hold the pieces.

While the puzzles are great, the company is, unfortunately, not. Apparently, they are rude and unprofessional, and most vendors have stopped carrying their puzzles because they’re a nightmare to deal with. They still have a website that you can order from (https://www.ricordi.info/), but I can’t recommend using that, obviously. I do, however, buy practically every Ricordi Arte & Art Stones puzzle I come across, unless I hate the image or it’s too expensive. Sadly, none of the vendors I buy from carry these puzzles anymore. It’s tragic that they can make such great puzzles and then fail completely at the business end of things.

Gloomy Carnival, 2022-06-11

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This was my first puzzle from the Abandoned series, and I loved it! Some of images look like they may be a bit too dark, but this was perfect. It remained interesting to the end, and was just the right amount of challenging (which is to say, not all that difficult). Great puzzle, and fun idea for a series. I’ve said before that I would love to do more horror themed puzzles, but I find most of them too dark (understandable, of course). This series definitely has a horror vibe, and I can definitely see this a setting for a Stephen King story 🙂

Gloomy Carnival, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 11, 2022.

Miami, 2022-06-09

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I love the image, but unfortunately, the quality was the worst I’ve seen from Tactic. The pieces are all of the basic shape with two tabs opposite, which I find boring. I wouldn’t have bought the puzzle if I’d known. Also, the fit was not good, in a few cases I had to use force to get pieces into their correct spaces. Very annoying. This puzzle is part of the Tactic Vintage Posters series, and they’ve released several sets in the series. The first was travel ads for Finland, and those were OK (I’ve only done one, still have four more to do), and then there’s the Art Deco set with at least this, one with New York and one with Italy. I have the New York one, and that seems to be the same as this. Bummer. On the bright side, the last set, from which I have two (Ancient Egypt and Space), seems to be all right. At least they have a good mix of piece shapes. It’s always annoying when you can’t trust a brand, and I find it especially unfortunate with Tactic, because it’s a Finnish brand, and I would love to suppport a local producer.

Miami, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 9, 2022.

Some pieces ended up in my Roomba, and one of them was damaged:

For a while, I thought it was from a different puzzle 🙂 I’ve fished plenty of pieces out of my Roomba, but I’ve never seen one so damaged before.

Neighbourhood, 2022-06-06

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Another adorable Zozoville monster. I was expecting this to be more difficult than it was, it turned out to be pretty easy.

Neighbourhood by Johan Potma, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 6, 2022.

Love the rat (?) making a sketch of the main character:

Cute Owls, 2022-06-02

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According to my googling, Pintoo is a Taiwanese brand, but their puzzles are available in Europe, and I’ve been wanting to try one for a while now. The pieces are plastic and the fit is very tight, in some cases too tight, and I had to use quite a lot of force to get pieces into place. Obviously, the pieces hold together really well, in fact, I had to take them apart one by one. Not really my kind of thing, but if you’ve always wanted to do a puzzle in the rain, or while bathing, this would definitely be a good choice.

The edge pieces came pre-assembled in a separate bag. I couldn’t be botherd to attach them. The piece count (300) was without the edges, since the part I completed was exactly 300 pieces.

Cute Owls, Pintoo, 300 pieces. Completed on June 2, 2022.

Cult Movies Puzzle Collection, 2022-06-02

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I’m not usually a fan of novelty packaging for puzzles, but Clementoni’s new series of puzzles with movie posters in the form of VHS video cassettes is awesome:

The boxes are a bit bigger than actual VHS cassettes (they have to be for the pieces to fit in the box), but otherwise, they’re look quite convincing, right down to the “handwritten” labels and that little plastic square that you could remove to prevent the cassette from being recorded on.

The box is just big enough to hold the pieces, and that is my favourite feature in a puzzle box 🙂

I did the Blues Brothers first. The black parts were a little tricky, but with just 500 pieces it was OK.

The Blues Brothers, Clementoni, 500 pieces. Completed on June 1, 2022.

Jaws was more entertaining as a puzzle, there was enough shades in the blue to keep it intersting.

Jaws, Clementoni, 500 pieces. Completed on June 2, 2022.

I hope there will be many more puzzles to come in this great series!

Ave Caesar!, 2022-05-31

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I finally managed to finish the Caesar puzzle, and I have to say, the audience was really difficult. I would have preferred to have something easier waiting for me when I got back from Dortmund this time, but I was too stubborn to start anything else before this was finished. There’s one piece missing, but it’s impossible to see from this photo (it’s in the shadowy part of the image).

Ave Caesar! by Loup, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on May 31, 2022.

There seems to be both gladiatorial combat and chariot races in progress. In reality, these two forms of entertainment actually belong in different venues, chariot races in the circus and gladiatorial combat in the amphitheater. Not sure if the audience used to throw water melons at contestants 🙂

The emperor looks bored.

Some of the wild beasts were in trouble…

… while others were doing just fine.

The puzzle is from 2004, and it’s excellent quality with a great fit. The arena part was great fun, but the audience was a bit too difficult. Still, I’m really glad that I got to do this puzzle, I thought I had missed the train on this one.

The Motorcycle Show 1, 2022-05-21

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This is the first puzzle in a set of two by Falcon. I’m not a huge fan of Falcon, I find the pieces often fit where they don’t belong, but with an image like this, it doesn’t matter much. I didn’t actually find that pieces fit where they don’t belong this time, but I still didn’t like the fit. It felt slightly off, the pieces just didn’t fit together as well as I would wish.

The Motorcycle Show 1, Falcon, 500 pieces. Completed on May 21, 2022.

Tibet Wheel of Life, 2022-05-20

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This puzzle was not easy, but it was a pleasure from start to finish. The quality was excellent, the best kind of Pomegranate. According to the box, the image explanes the concepts of Buddhism, and images like this are placed outside temples, so that people who can’t read can also understand the teachings. The artist is unknown but presumed Tibetan.