My friend brought the other puzzle made by her grandfather’s brother! The Christmassy one I wrote about earlier has only recently been re-discovered, but this one my friend remembers doing multiple times as a child. As you might expect, this is more worn, and on one piece the image is partly gone. Not a huge surprise for a puzzle that many children have worked on.

The image shows scenes with Native Americans doing the things white people expect them to do (there’s one white guy in the upper left-hand corner), and I doubt this image would be made today.

The puzzle itself has 49 pieces, and the cut was more intricate than on the first puzzle. I’m convinced this was made later, and there were even whimsies:

A shark, a dog, a duck and a tree with a woodpecker and an owl. Really impressive!

These are the only known puzzles by this artist, but I’m sure he did more, and I hope they will be found someday!

 

A friend of mine was kind enough to share a family heirloom with me. This wooden puzzle was handmade by the brother of her grandfather, probably in the 20s or 30s. There is one other puzzle he made, and I hope to do that, too, one day (the puzzles live in Sweden, so my friend will have to bring it over).

The pieces are really big, I took a photo with my car keys to show the scale. I was also going to measure the completed puzzle, but I forgot.

The puzzle is stored in an old shoebox, and it says ca. 190 pieces on the box. It also says Jenny Nyström on the box. I asked my friend who that is, and it turns out she is a very famous 19th Century Swedish artist who specialized in traditional Christmas images. (You’ll see what I mean if you do an image search of Jenny Nyström). This signature on the puzzle is not Jenny, but Curt Nyström. Turns out, her son continued the family tradition!

Anyway, I was very impressed with the quality of the puzzle, it is every bit as good as I would expect a commercial puzzle to be. I was especially impressed by how the image is perfectly glued to the plywood. It would be great to be able to make my own puzzles, but I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen, I’m far too clumsy 🙂