Pannini's Picture Gallery

Giovanni Paolo Pannini's Picture Gallery

F. X. Schmid, late 90s(?)

2000 pieces

36 1/2" x 25 3/4"

$34.99 from ebay, sealed/complete

Difficulty level: Fairly difficult

Pannini's title is actually Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome, titled here just Picture Gallery, while the notoriously difficult 5000-piece Ravensburger edition is titled Views of Modern Rome. There are also 4000- and 6000-piece versions from other publishers.

After two sessions, I have all the border done, plus the red curtains, most of the men, and have started on the frames.

After getting started on the frames, I concentrated on getting the paintings themselves done, starting with the skies; each one is almost like a mini-puzzle.

The last 200 or so pieces are pretty tough--mostly shadows and statues and bits of architecture and walls that have no detail.

This was a hugely enjoyable puzzle, one that I completed in about half the time as the Step puzzle that was half the size.

Rembrandt's Danae (Russian Museum Collection)

Rembrandt's Danae

Step Puzzle, Russian Museum Collection 201?, imported from Russia

1000 pieces

27" x 19"

purchased new ($13) from Amazon

Difficulty level: Very tough bordering on brutal

I think Step Puzzle's Russian Museums series are some of the most beautiful puzzles being made today. I find the digital art puzzles that the big companies are all releasing quite hideous. I'm also not interested in doing a puzzle of cupcakes, or quilts, or jellybeans, or cats, or any of the standard subject matter for contemporary puzzles. Russia's Step, however, is publishing puzzles (some up to 3000 pieces) of incredible works of art owned by Russian and European museums.

They're not easy to find in the US--I got this one for $13 (including shipping) from Amazon, and they have a few others that are more expensive, available through third-party sellers. You can find a few more on ebay, but they are quite expensive (some over $100, plus shipping from Russia). At any rate I was happy to find this one, and hoped that the quality would be good.

The box itself is beautiful and high quality, with gold embossing on black matte. The pieces are a little thin, and the cut is very similar and generic, but the biggest problems are none of the pieces really fit tightly, and pieces fit in places they don't go. Since the fit is so loose, you often can't be sure if a piece is in the right place (this is the reason why the border isn't finished).

Overall, I love the image, and the quality of the picture is good. Here's where I got after a few hours:

Notice the gray section in the upper right. In the picture above, it's missing pieces. In the picture below, it's not, though I didn't add any pieces. Turns out I had several in the wrong place and the whole thing shifted over. This company's shoddy craftsmanship means that not only do you have to defeat the puzzle itself, you also have to outsmart the shortcomings of the product: pieces that fit in several places, etc. Notice the border at the top still isn't finished, because I cannot figure it out. Despite all this, I'm still having fun with the puzzle. If STEP had the quality of Ravensburger (a company that makes some of the ugliest puzzles on the market), they'd be my favorite brand.

Rembrandt had a dark palette, and like the other Rembrandt puzzle I did, the final push is all brown pieces, and here I have ~250 pieces to go. Step's piece similarity is driving me nuts. For every ten pieces I find, I find one that's in the wrong place already, so you end up having to backtrack over and over again. Some pieces fit perfectly well in more than one place.

Piatnik musical notes

Musical Notes

Piatnik, 20??

1000 pieces

27" x 19"

purchased new ($18) from these guys in Brooklyn, who, despite there being nothing about it on their website, have a huge selection of puzzles

Difficulty level: very tough

I identified four areas to work on initially: the border, the clefs, the double line down the middle, and the word cresc., which appears throughout in stacks of four. After that, it got tough. Part of the problem is that the pieces have very little variety, and some of the pieces don't actually go where they match/fit, so you have to do a little backtracking.

This is a difficult puzzle in that there are no singular areas to concentrate on; you can't work one area for a while and move on to the next. I find myself sorting the pieces by what is on them (small floating dash, letters/numbers, empty lines, blank space, etc), even though those things don't necessarily go together. I have a feeling this one is going to take a while, even at a mere 1000 pieces.

Next I pulled any piece that was part of a vertical line that separated measures and started making little 2-, 3-, and 4-piece matches.

The I focused on the four big blank lines, and putting together the longer thick black bars.

Once I made enough (very slow) headway comparing each piece with some identifiable marking to the artwork and putting it in place, I sorted the last 200+ pieces (all were the same "two holes, two notches" shape) into vertical and horizontal, and started attacking the horizontal spaces first.

Then it was just a matter of popping the vertical ones into place. When I got to the last piece, I realized that it didn't actually go in the last available slot, so I had to scour the puzzle like a map to find where I'd gone wrong before I could finish.