Jan-2025
Putting the Pieces Together: Puzzles and Their Many Forms
Puzzles: the activity for a rainy day, a family night, or just a fun pastime. It’s something everyone has done at least once in their lives, and something many people have enjoyed for generations before. The word puzzle is used to describe many things, with the most common being the jigsaw puzzle. But the puzzle did not start at the scope it is today; it gradually grew with popularity and culture from something relatively niche.
Instances of the first jigsaw puzzle were seen in the 18th century, when an English cartographer named John Spilsbury mounted one of his hand drawn maps onto wood and carefully cut out the countries. He created the puzzle to help aid children in learning their geography. Allowing children to learn their countries while also engaging their minds in other ways, this helped with recognition not only in the countries’ names but the locations as well. Other people soon started catching on and created their own cut up educational pictures, including maps, religious imagery, and animals. These types of puzzles were referred to as “dissected” puzzles at this time, since the word “jigsaw” wasn’t used until the late 19th century where it was taken from the instrument later used to cut out the puzzles.
Most puzzles were aimed towards educating younger children, but soon began branching out to adult audiences. Jigsaw puzzles now included famous paintings and drawings, broadening the interest. With the innovation of the jigsaw and lithographic prints in the 19th century, puzzle makers were able to make more complex puzzles for their buyers. Cutting the pieces in precise lines and curves allowed for puzzles to become more challenging and appeal to an older audience. Some pieces were cut so close to the subject that it made matching up the pieces by relative color difficult. Thus it became more challenging for the puzzler to complete. However, due to the cost of wood and labor to manufacture them, puzzles were more expensive than their modern counterparts, usually costing around $5 (which would be about $150 today in comparison). It wasn’t until the early 20th century that puzzles were able to be made cheaper and quicker. This is mostly in part due to new lithograph techniques, new technology, and the switch from wood pieces to the much cheaper plywood alternative. Now more families were able to enjoy puzzles as their mass production began.
In the wake of World War II, the supply of plywood was small, turning puzzle makers to yet another alternative, cardboard. Cardboard puzzles were around much earlier, but were slow on the uptake due to many perceiving them as cheap alternatives to their wooden counterparts. With new cardboard puzzles, the manufacturing became even more cost efficient and now allowed for even more widespread usages of the medium, like advertisement puzzles.
The modern puzzle uses cardboard and a large die cut machine that cuts out the interlocking puzzle piece shapes that are most well known today. Subjects range from pop culture to fine art and anything in between; there’s a puzzle for everyone. The fascination with puzzles only furthers the interest as more people who are looking for a fun family activity to do, then be able to pack it up and redo it at a later time. The collectors who make them seal and display their puzzles in frames to showcase the image and time spent on making them.

Donated by Gilfillen Statler
This is an example of the technique of lithographed paper on thin pieces of wood. A thirty-three-piece puzzle cut up into four sided polygons depicting Jesus giving blessings to the children, a very well known story from the bible. This puzzle also shows one very common subject for early puzzles of the time: depiction of religious scenes as a way of teaching them to younger children. It is also a very simple cut puzzle, which also lends to the use in teaching children about important bible stories and lessons.

Donated by Mrs. Margaret Sargent
Another classic puzzle subject is that of animals. This puzzle shows multiple views of farm life with different farm animals throughout the scenes. These puzzle pieces are less simple than the previous, adding a bit more challenge, yet it still is cut in larger pieces that give context to the surrounding pieces. Some puzzle pieces interlock with one another, creating the edge pieces to the puzzle, with a more non-interlocking section of pieces in the middle.
To add to the reuse of puzzles, some puzzle makers would affix a puzzle to both sides of the board and cut out the pieces. However, the pieces are cut in a more general fashion to accommodate the use of both sides of the board and as such are made much easier to line up the non-interlocking pieces. The pen and ink drawing is “The Champion” by Charles Dana Gibson, the other painting is an unknown scene of three young girls in the countryside.

Donated by Nancy Osgood Perry
This castle puzzle is an interesting hybrid of puzzle and play. It is a hand colored lithograph picture adhered to the cut out wooden pieces. With thick wooden base pieces and smaller wooden pieces that taper upwards, the puzzle could very well have been solved laying down or placed upright for a more 3D puzzle building experience. The puzzle pieces create an old castle with 19th century horsemen and infantry.

Gift of Reggie Smith
One interesting feature about puzzles pre-1920s would be that they did not not include a picture with the puzzle, as it was deemed cheating. Which was what happened to this puzzle in our collection, the box was without a photo reference and with the label given on the box, no reference image could be found. The puzzle originally named “David and the big dinner that he did not eat” turned out to be “David Copperfield goes to school”, a painting by Fortunino Matania.
This puzzle has another interesting trait of wooden jigsaw puzzles: recognizable pieces that are cut out of the puzzle, which are called whimsys. Whimsys are named since they are pieces the puzzle cutter would make on a whim. However this puzzle is almost entirely made of whimsies that interlock to create this advertisement for cold medication. This puzzle is also very unique as it is an advertisement that was carefully pasted to a wood board and cut out.

Donated by Lorna Lieberman
Modern puzzles are not the only ones to turn to pop culture. This puzzle uses both hard cut lines and circle pieces that come together to make a picture of comic characters from Foxy Grandpa, a comic strip that was published from 1900-1918 and was also seen in other adaptations throughout the 20th century. A recognizable cast of characters being made into a puzzle is not unlikely, and would help in selling more of the product for fans of the comics. The interesting mix of rounded and flat shapes also add to the intrigue of the puzzle, as circular puzzle pieces were not seen much in older puzzles.

Curator Purchase
Even more modern cardboard puzzles still host interesting traits about them. This Angry Birds puzzle has three puzzles inside the box that when finished can be made into one large panorama for display. This modern example of pop culture references in puzzles shows the demand for puzzles even today.
Jillian Michel, Collections Intern