Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge
Golden, 1970s(?), Masterpiece Series
1505 pieces
27"x33"
purchased (complete) from ebay ($10)
difficulty level: moderate; the Masterpiece Series cut helps a lot
Due to the relentless sea of brown, I had to sort by shape and go to the pattern method of solving this much earlier than anticipated.
Edgar Degas, The Millinery Shop
Golden, 1970s(?), Masterpiece Series
1505 pieces
27"x33"
purchased (1 piece missing) from ebay ($10)
difficulty level: moderate; the Masterpiece Series cut helps a lot
Another beautiful puzzle from Golden. There were two pieces missing, one of which I found after I had taken the puzzle apart. No sign of the other one. Love these Masterpiece Series puzzles, love the subjects, love the quality, love the cut. Wish they made more, and wish they went to 2000 or 3000 pieces or bigger. Very enjoyable puzzle.
The Battle Between Carnival and Lent
Peter Breughel
Milton Bradley, Fine Arts Puzzle #1, 1984
1540 pieces
31" x 23 1/2"
purchased sealed (complete) from Ebay ($18.40)
Difficulty level: Quite tough.
With no central image, and such a busy image, and such an overall dull color palette, it was tough to find a starting place. I just went with yellow as it's the most dominant color in the painting.
It's a beautiful puzzle, and as always the MB cut is fun to work with, but such a busy image made this a deceptively tough puzzle.
Star Trek 50th Anniversary
Art by Dusty Abell, colored by Lovern Kindzierski
Aquarius
3000 pieces
32" x 45"
purchased new from Amazon ($30), but the seam is miscut and there was a missing piece (EDIT: missing piece was found after I had disassembled the puzzle :()
Difficulty level: not difficult at all, but it's a fun build
I think I've done all of Aquarius' Star Trek puzzles, and was thrilled to see them produce something at a larger, more challenging size. The puzzle is really striking, when finished, but unfortunately there are some production problems.
When I was assembling the border I realized that the seam between the two halves was misaligned, which was confirmed when I got more of the puzzle done:
A very fun puzzle, very disappointing about the quality. I have done several puzzles from Aquarius and didn't have any problems, but clearly their move to the larger size caused some problems. Hopefully they will work out the production kinks and keep doing these big puzzles. Would be fun if they did a big 3000 collage for Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise as well.
Gustave Courbet, The Rock of Hautepierre
Golden, 1970s(?), Masterpiece Series
1505 pieces
27"x33"
purchased (complete) from ebay ($10)
difficulty level: moderate; the Masterpiece Series cut helps a lot
This is the third in the 1970s Masterpiece Series from Golden that I've done. This is one of my favorite series of old puzzles. I scored four of them at once in a lot on ebay, crossing my fingers that they were all complete. So far, so good.
After the mountain was completed, I was left with a box of green pieces, so I sorted by piece type and used my familiarity with the cut of this series to fill out the rest.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Waddingtons, 1979
4000 pieces
38" x 57"
purchased sealed from eBay ($19.32)
Difficulty level: Very, very tough
My first 4000-piece puzzle! I don't usually go for these pastoral scenes, but I'd heard good things about Waddingtons' quality and was looking for a 4000 to try, and this was sealed and cheap.
The pieces don't always align horizontally, as an added challenge:
Water wasn't too bad--since the pieces all had horizontal lines on them, it was easy to tell which were oriented vertically and which horizontally. Then the colors were fairly easy to tell apart.
Time to start the sky . . .
All the blues laid out.
Luckily the puzzle has a repeating cut--both halves are the same cut, flipped 180 degrees, so by dividing it in half, I could use the pattern of cut in the water to match the pattern of the sky. A very slow process, since you can only really tell very dark or very light pieces apart, and there are only a few discernible hints of cloud.
Final push.
