Month: August 2025
Eyes Full of Stars by Marie-Claude Fournier, cut design by Mark Cappitella
578 pieces, 440x352x7mm (17.5″ x 14″). Canadian artist Marie-Claude Fournier. Victory puzzles, in their “Artisan series”. Puzzle cut design by Mark Cappitella. Loving everything about this — the art, which is gorgeous; the puzzle cut, which is tricky and delightful; the feel of the pieces — thick, solid, curvy. They have the sharpness of laser-cut […]
Freddie Mercury by Lee Topp, Puzzly 527
Just finished an amazing laser-cut puzzle by Puzzly, 527 pieces and really fabulous whimsies — including a super large multi-piece whimsy. All themed! The artist is “Lee Topp”, who is described on Puzzly’s Freddie Mercury puzzle page as: Lee Topp is a south coast based mixed media artist taking inspiration from Music and Legends. Influenced […]
L’Ermitage by Paul Berthon, Sr. B
I love the Sr. B hand-cut puzzles, so it’s a real treat to get one from Hoefnagel. This one is “L’ermitage“, an 1897 Art Nouveau piece by Paul Berthon (1872-1909), used as a poster for the revue L’ermitage. The original seems to be in the Davis Collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The […]
Optimago, Off for the Honeymoon by Frederick Morgan
This 266-piece Optimago (1979-2005) puzzle is listed as an “Enigma”, with no image available. As with a lot of vintage puzzles, and puzzles made of old European art, the colors were a little bit muddy. They look a lot crisper in the photo than they did to my eyes! Maybe it’s my eyes that are […]
Hotel Melrose Lobby by Perkins Harnly
I really enjoyed this 250-piece puzzle from Puzzly (via Hoefnagel). It was a fast solve, with a mix of traditional puzzle pieces and whimsies, like the two Wentworth puzzles I just did — but I enjoyed the puzzling experience more. I think the wood was a bit thicker than in those two Wentworths (they have […]
Apro Vision, “Moon Castle”
Via Hoefnagel, I got this laser-cut 152-piece (“A4 size”) puzzle from “Apro Vision”, which appears to be one of the randomly generated names that Chinese laser cutters create to sell on Amazon. It’s a pretty cool and tricky image — many little doors in various sizes, plus some gears, and trees in various teacups (surrealist […]
Purr-fect Night by Mary Stubberfield
Wentworth Puzzles, 240 pieces, “Purr-fect Night” by Mary Stubberfield, via Hoefnagel. Another thin, MDF wood, mix of traditional pieces with etched whimsies. I liked this art better than the owl puzzle that was also in the Hoefnagel pack, but the puzzling experience otherwise was very similar.
Owlets in the Moonlight, Rosalind Solomon
A Wentworth 250-piece puzzle by Rosalind Solomon, by way of Hoefnagel. Although it was owl-themed, I wasn’t in love with the art — I’m not a fan of works where a large picture has the center hollowed out to have a different scene, or a collage. I did enjoy the multitudinous owl whimsies, though. … […]
