Comment

Jigsaw Puzzles

An Illustrated History and Price Guide
May 08, 2016
My comment doesn't apply to the book at hand, which I haven't read. This 1990 jigsaw puzzle book is outdated, since prices for any collectible change rapidly. SPL should purchase Williams' 2004 *The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History.* This newer book is highly readable, taking the history from its beginning as a tool for the children of King George III to learn geography via cut-up maps glued to wood. Such "dissected maps" were brought to the US by the rich for the same purpose. In a severe depression at the turn of the 20th c. wooden puzzles became a craze for the upper classes; during the Depression, the craze spread to everyone out of work, as the technology for producing them cheaply had evolved. Puzzles now exist both in cardboard and wooden versions, both inexpensive and expensive, hand cut versions. I've been "caught" by wooden puzzles, with a friend who cuts her own and shares not only hers, but those her mother cut. We also buy from the Internet, including eBay and commercial sites. Jigsaw puzzles are a fine way of improving manual dexterity, a great social or solitary occasion, and concentrate the mind on the task at hand instead of one's worries. I highly recommend SPL purchase this 2004 book, for circulation. It includes both b & w illustrations, and many color plates, lists of companies that make puzzles, advice for those who want to make and/or sell their own. A thoroughly charming and useful book, whatever one's interest in puzzles.