I got “Carnival in Venice” from Dreamton (available via etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DREAMTON) and was excited to put it together. Very pretty cutting design, with lots of fleur-de-lis and similar sorts of formal, fluid symbols. An interesting trident interlock. And a really fun border. The pieces are a thin composite wood; I got the 200-piece (12″x8″) size. The art is by Oleksandra Ekstra, aka Aleksandra Ekster (1882-1949); Christie’s sold the original recently and noted it as circa 1930s.
I talked a lot with the cut designer, Ihor Reshetnikov; as a Ukrainian business, he’s had trouble with the Russian-managed Facebook group for wood puzzles. He was in fact banned for promoting artists as Ukrainian artists, that the Russian moderators disagreed with. … Interesting to contemplate the NetChoice cases, just heard in the Supreme Court earlier this week. The Tr**p-ophilic progenitors of these particular statutes certainly don’t care about Ukrainians’ struggles, but one can certainly imagine a public forum that’s actually … a public forum.
