12. Two vintage architectural puzzles hand-cut by “Shoebox Guy”
Assembly and comparison of two small puzzles made by the same unknown hand-cutter; and five digressions about whisky, changing fashions, and the City of Chester (about 3600 words; 33 photos)
[Updated: I have since learned from David and Jackie Armstrong that these puzzles are by a still-anonymous cutter who goes by “JT”. A number of the other larger puzzles by the same cutter (recognizable by thee same cutting style, handwriting and packaging) were sold by the same British vendor in other eBay auctions in May and June 2020 for several hundred pounds. The figural in the second puzzle that I thought was the greek letter pi (π) is actually the initials “JT”.]
I bought these two puzzles in May from British e-Bay auctions. There were also other puzzles put up over a period of about three weeks by that seller which appeared to have also been made by the same cutter (based on the distinctive cutting style and handwriting) and I bid on several of them. As I reviewed the auctions and considered how much to bid I came to think of him or her as “Shoebox Guy.”
In retrospect I wish that I had had more confidence in my impression from the photos that these were high quality puzzles and had bid more for the larger ones. But I was still fairly new to online auctions at the time and I didn’t know that vintage puzzles in good condition seem to go up exponentially in value with their difficulty. At least having two puzzles made by the same hand gives me the opportunity to do this comparison analysis of them.
The big spenders ignored these two small puzzles that have rather calendar-style architectural photographs as their artwork, and that don’t have whimsies. I bought the 213 piece A Typical Obwalden House (Swiss Chalet) for the opening bid of £10 ($15.05 CAN) making it the cheapest wood puzzle I have ever bought. Eastgate Street Chester is smaller at only 160 pieces but someone, not the cutter, wrote “difficult!” on the label. I got it for £17 ($25.70 CAN.) Fortunately, mailing costs to Canada from the UK are cheaper than from the US, and I buy from sellers who are willing to hold on to puzzles that I buy until I have enough of them for an efficient shipment (just under 2 kilos.) So I consider these both to be very frugal puzzle purchases.
Normally I would have assembled the smaller one first, as practice for the presumably more-difficult larger one. But I decided to assemble the larger puzzle first because someone, not the cutter, had written the word “Difficult!” on the smaller one’s label. I assumed that the cutter had used colour-line cutting or other tricks when making it. How else would a 160 piece puzzle be considered to be difficult?
Assembly of Typical Obwalden House (Swiss Chalet)
by an unknown hand-cutter photographer also unknown
213 pieces 12¼”x10” (31x25.5cm) 3.7 cm/piece ¼” (6mm) 5ply
This puzzle is in its original box, in this case a vintage whisky gift presentation tin with a hand-written label affixed to it. The label has its name and the size of the puzzle but no reference picture. All that I remembered from having seen a photo of the complete puzzle when I bought it was that it is a photograph of a stereotypical Swiss chalet surrounded by a colourful garden. I looked up “Obwalden.” It is a small rural Swiss canton that is in the very middle of the country, in the Sarner Aa river valley south of Lake Lucerne.
I began with sorting. At least I knew that the blue pieces would go on top. (Ever since the assembly of the Our Lady of the Cow Parsley puzzle where the sky was yellow, and one with a pastel beach scene where the sky was pale orange and the sand was blue, I’ve learned not to take that bit of intelligence for granted.)
The lower edge pieces, and a clump of black-eyed susans (I think that’s what they are) in the garden, came together quickly:
So did the rest of the edge pieces and a few more pieces near the black-eyed susans:
Here is where it got more interesting. It occurred to me that the box the puzzle came in is a clear sign that I should drink some Scotch malt whisky while assembling this puzzle, and I just happened to have some Glenmorangie (rhymes with orangey) already open. I poured myself a dram.
[Digression: The presentation tin once held the flagship 10 year-old version of Glenmorangie Distilleries’ classic malt whisky. The Glenmorangie Distillery was officially founded in 1843 but there are records that “aquavitae” was already being distilled at that location, from water that came from a pool that was considered sacred in ancient times, in 1703.
Don’t be deceived by the pale yellow colour of the dram in my glass. This is seriously high quality whisky. Glenmorangie is not as well-known by the general public as Glenlivet or Glenfiddich, but it has long been the bestselling malt whisky in Scotland, and whisky connoisseurs have very high respect for it. Here are the tasting notes for Glenmorangie’s 10 year-old written by renowned expert Jim Murray, author of the annual Whisky Bible:
Nose: perhaps the most enigmatic aroma of them all; delicate yet assertive, sweet yet dry, young yet oaky; a malty tone poem;
Taste: flaky oakiness throughout but there is an impossibly complex toastiness to the barley which seems to suggest the slightest hint of smoke;
Finish: amazingly long for such a light dram, drying from the initial sweetness but with flaked almonds amid the oakier, rich cocoa notes;
Overall balance and complexity: remains one of the great single malts; a whisky of uncompromising aesthetic beauty from the first enigmatic whiff to the last teasing and tantalizing gulp. Complexity at its most complex.
Jim Murray gives it an overall score of 94 points: He has never given a score to any whisky, no matter how expensive, higher than 97. (Note: the term “oaky” is not referring to the taste of oak wood but is shorthand for the toasty, caramel, nutty, vanilla characteristics that aging in oak casks for many years gives to the aroma and taste of whisky.)
I am drinking the same 10 year old version of the whisky that Jim Murray was describing, and that our anonymous cutter presumably drank, in that mine too had been aged for ten years in American oak casks. But mine was bottled at the cask strength of 57.5% while his was diluted to a standard 40% bottling strength. (Don’t worry too much for my liver; I diluted mine down to that drinking level too.) End of digression.]
Back to the puzzle, the fence rails and trees with blue sky filtering through them were my next colour clues. The garden was getting a little trickier now . . .
. . . so I switched to working on the house instead of the garden, . . .
. . . then back to the garden, but first, my glass was empty so I poured myself another dram.
[Digression: Malt whisky compares to blended Scotch whisky rather the same way that hand-cut wooden jigsaw puzzles compare to their cardboard counterparts; i.e., it is made from more expensive ingredients in a much more labourious old-fashioned way and is therefore much more expensive; and in a side-by-side comparison it is clearly the superior product. In fact, malt whisky today is made nearly exactly the same way that it was made in the late 1800s, often in the same buildings and using the same equipment.
Here are some photos of the Glenmorangie distillery:
End of Digression.]
Do you remember where I was with the puzzle? No? I was going back to the garden. But first, after all that research looking for distillery photos I needed to pour myself another dram.
I don’t understand how a puzzle that started out so easy could suddenly get a bit trickier. It’s a mystery! Perhaps it was because I was getting distracted by looking at the pretty pictures on the Glenmorangie tin:
But I was still making progress. Back to gardening, and saving the scary dark part of the house for last:
And it’s completed:
[Digression: I have one final distillery picture. While trying to date the Glenmorangie presentation tin (to see if it might give me a clue as to the age of the puzzle) I found a picture of one just like mine online. The image that the cutter covered up with his or her label shows what is perhaps the most important step in the whisky-making process.
The first vapors that come from the still condense but they are not the right kind of alcohol for making good whisky. The quality gets better and better as the still heats up, but then begins to get poorer and poorer and include more water as the still comes to a boil. A major part of the master distiller’s job is knowing when to begin to direct the condensate into the vat where it will be mixed together and put into casks to age, and then when to stop collecting it.
A “wide cut” gives you a larger quantity to make into whisky but it won’t have as good of a flavour. Conversely, a “narrow cut” produces less quantity but higher quality. I learned about that from Mike Nicholson, a Scottish Master Distiller who moved here to Victoria after he retired.
Glenmorangie takes the narrowest cuts of any Scottish distillery!
End of digression.]
Assembly of Eastgate Street Chester
by an unknown hand-cutter photographer also unknown
160 pieces 7 ¾” x 10 ¾” 19.6 x 27 cm (3.3 cm/piece) 6mm 5 ply
This puzzle is also in its original packaging, which is a small shoebox for a pair of children’s sandals.
When I began the puzzle my only memory of its image was that it was an urban streetscape in what looked like a rather touristy part of its town because it has a high concentration of heritage buildings.
I began with my usual sorting. I immediately noticed that the pieces looked like the puzzle has the same cutting style as the other one. The fact that there weren’t very many pieces with straight edges suggested to me that the cutter had not done colour-line cutting. Right away I began to suspect that the handwritten word “Difficult!” someone had added to the label was probably misleading. That would be unfortunate because I had really been looking forward to a more challenging puzzle from Shoebox Guy than the other one had been.
In my initial sort, besides separating the edge pieces I grouped together pieces that had text on them (apparently from advertising signs) and ones with people:
I began assembly with some pieces that had distinctive colours and texture (they turned out to be roof shingles and a set of Corinthian columns), and the lower edge which led to the crowd of pedestrians. The only tricky part was that some of the blue street pavement pieces were hiding with the sky pieces.
The rest of the non-sky edge pieces went into place pretty easily, as did the little islands that I had made from the pieces with sign text. I found more people-pieces hiding among the loose pieces.
[Digression: I knew that with some knowledge of fashion all those people would give a clue as to when this photo was taken, which in turn might help in my speculation about when this puzzle had been made. My knowledge of fashion is somewhat limited so I sent close-up photos to my friend Beth Skala who has a lot of experience in trying to date family photos to help identify the people in them as part of her genealogical research.
Here are zoom-able close-ups of the people and vehicles in this street scene.
Beth got back to me quickly with her analysis. She said:
I can see right away that two women are wearing bell bottoms: woman in red pants, brown boots, and navy top with child leaning on her in middle of your second photo; and woman in blue bell bottoms pushing a stroller in the left of the next photo. Also, several of the men have long or longish hair. The older women have dresses just below the knee, while the younger women have dresses above the knee. High heels are chunky. All point to late 1960s, like 1967 to 1969, or very early 1970s.
End of digression.]
Because this puzzle is so small I was able to do it on my smaller puzzle-board, which I commonly only use as overflow parking when sorting pieces of large puzzles, or for flipping complete puzzles over to see the back side. My refreshing beverage for this puzzle was mint sun-tea. Puzzle assembly was zipping along at least as fast as the other one had been. I wonder why some previous person had thought it was difficult?
Architecture sure does give a lot of hints:
[Digression: After I was well along with my puzzle assembly I got curious about the location where this interesting mix of architecture occurs in such a concentration. Chester is a city of about 80,000 people on the River Dee, which was the traditional northern boundary between England and Wales. It was first established by the Romans as a “castrum” – a soldiers’ encampment - that evolved into a Roman-style city.
In Medieval times the city both gained a cathedral and it needed to fortify itself with walls to protect the town from Viking raids. Chester still has the ruins of its Roman amphitheatre, a Norman castle, several authentic Medieval buildings, and the most complete medieval walls (2 miles!) of any British city.
Although Chester is only about 16 miles south of Liverpool and 44 miles southwest of Manchester, its main role during the industrial revolution was as the railway-serviced market town for the surrounding farming region of Cheshire, and in particular, it was the location of a major cattle market.
The city thrived during the Victorian era, resulting in a building boom during which a number of local architects filled its downtown with a concentration of then-fashionable Jacobean-revival buildings, which is a sub-set of the broader Tudor revival movement that also greatly influenced late 19th century architecture here in Canada. However in the case of Chester, these revival buildings also complemented an impressive collection of authentic Jacobean buildings that still existed in the city’s downtown.
About half of my professional career was as a policy analyst dealing with heritage conservation issues. The fact that this puzzle image shows a downtown street with so many buildings from before and during the Victorian era told me that the city (or at least that part of the city) must not have been very prosperous during the first 2/3 or so of the 20th century. If Chester had thrived during that time the sites of buildings that had become so unfashionable would have been redeveloped. (During most of the 20th century little or no investment was ever put into rehabilitation rather than replacement of old urban buildings, no matter how much character and historic significance they had.)
I also knew that if those buildings are still there now, at some point the people of the city recognized that the quaint atmosphere of its downtown had become a tourist magnet, and hence an economic resource for the town, and they began to protect that character and promote restoration rather than redevelopment.
I got considerable satisfaction when I researched Chester in Wikipedia after the puzzle was completed and found that I had gotten my speculations about the city’s 20th century history right. Chester’s heritage preservation movement began in the late 1960s, and just as in North America it was sparked by local concerns that emerged when highways and urban redevelopment threatened the town’s tourism appeal.
Chester’s then-newfound concern in the late ‘60s about protecting and preserving its heritage and charm has continued. Here is a recent (2011) photo of the same streetscape, but looking the other direction:
This rich heritage character isn’t confined to Eastgate Street. Indeed, there are a number of such streetscapes in the parts of the city that are enclosed by its vestigial city walls. In fact, Chester is considered to be one of the finest remaining medieval cities in all of Europe. End of digression.]
And the puzzle is done!
Comparison and conclusions
The images of both of these puzzles are photos of architecture and I strongly suspect that they come from calendars. Beth’s cursory analysis of the fashions in the Eastgate Street Chester photo makes a solid case for circa 1969 for that one, and since the calendar art was intended to depict a contemporary scene it was probably published pretty soon after that time.
While Shoebox Guy may have made the puzzle using an already-old calendar’s artwork, I think it is more likely that he or she made it from a relatively recent one. This would suggest that the puzzle itself may have been made in the early 1970s, or about 50 years ago. I can’t think of any way to even guess at when the photo of Typical Obwalden House (Swiss Chalet) was taken, except that its colours seem more super-saturated than we usually see in this style of modern photography. Tentatively, I think of both of these as being vintage hand-cut puzzles.
As far as I can tell, the cutting style of the two puzzles is the same, and both puzzles were intended to be easy to assemble rather than challenging. The photos inherently contain lots of assembly clues in the form of areas where contiguous pieces have similar colours and textures, as well as many lines to help orient and place the pieces. The images do have opportunities for using familiar cutting tricks (such as colour-line cutting or disguising some of the edge pieces) to enhance their difficulty, but Shoebox Guy chose not to do so. Whoever wrote “Difficult!” on the Chester Eastgate Street label must not have been experienced at assembling wood puzzles, because as far as I can tell the only thing that would be considered difficult about the puzzle is that it isn’t the standard grid cutting that cardboard puzzle people are familiar with.
From the casual style of packaging I don’t think that I am going too far out on a limb to speculate that Shoebox Guy was not a professional puzzle-cutter. But from a technical perspective these are very well-made puzzles, using ¼” high-quality hardwood plywood, and cut with smooth, even graceful cutting lines using a sawblade that had very fine teeth – perhaps a jeweler’s saw. The sides of the pieces are so smooth they feel almost velvety to the touch. (They are by far the smoothest of any hand-cut puzzle that I have assembled so far.)
All of this suggests to me that the anonymous cutter was likely to have been sufficiently knowledgeable and skilled to craft a challenging puzzle if that was his or her intention. I therefore think both puzzles were intended to be relaxing rather than challenging cutting design, perhaps made for someone who did not have wood puzzling experience. For that objective they are very well-designed. I had hoped for them to be challenging (especially the one someone called “Difficult!") but the problem was me having the wrong expectation rather than that the cutter made a too-easy puzzle.
There is one other clue that may someday lead to the identity of Shoebox Guy. In the Swiss Chalet puzzle there is one figural piece that is shaped like pi (π). It is as if it was intended to be a signature piece, but there is no such piece in the other puzzle. Perhaps I will one day learn of a cutter who was active in the 1970s or later who employed this distinctive identifier. [Update: see the update at the beginning of this review-essay: I was right that this figural is a signature piece, but it is actually the initials JT.]
All in all, I think that I enjoyed assembling Typical Obwalden House (Swiss Chalet) puzzle more than Eastgate Street Chester. That is partly because it was larger, and therefore a bit more challenging, but also because of the its rich colours. The warm tones of the house’s façade and fencing complemented the bright cheerful clusters of flowers and the soothing greens of the lawn and backdrop grove of trees.
On the other hand, while both puzzles had interesting little details for me to discover during assembly, and the same fine cutting that produced pieces in many interesting shapes, Eastgate Street inspired research which led me to learn about the amazing English city of Chester. Since I have not travelled to Europe in my 74 years so far I probably won’t ever travel to England, but if I did I would now put Chester pretty high on my must-see list.
So on balance I will rate these two puzzles as having been equally enjoyable. And given their low prices, they are both very good value indeed!
I am not worried about your liver, Bill, as I understand you to be a whisky taster, rather than a whisky guzzler. Of the puzzles you've analyzed in this post, I prefer the "Eastgate Street Chester" one. It looks like a place I could more easily get invited to visit than the other one does. The picture that most appeals to me today, though, is actually "Selecting the Spirit." Perhaps you or Shoebox Guy could make that image into a jigsaw puzzle. It would be nice! I am also quite taken with the piece in the shape of pi, possibly because I am an enthusiastic "math taster." Thanks for your work.