The BCD

May 2017 saw the publication of a bumper Special 24 Page Edition of the newsletter featuring 10 pages of quality photos of puzzles shown at the BCD House Party weekend held in Bournemouth in February and the March meeting at Normandy (see previous post). So a quick bit of Maths will tell you that it also contained 14 pages of interesting news, information and articles about puzzling and the BCD too!

John Hyde contributed an article to accompany the pictures of his lovely and evocative advertising puzzles which included Holtzapffel’s “Dick Whittington”, rail-inspired “Scarborough”,  “Southport” and LNER’s “East Coast”, White Star Line’s ” RMS Majestic” , Cunard’s “Acquitania Outward Bound” and a more obscure South African poster for “Seltzbach” spring water.

David Shearer followed up his “Repairs” workshop and demonstration with an article referencing several puzzles he had worked on. These included the much-sought-after 1933 Chad Valley plywood “King Kong”, one of his personal favourites, ” The Conflagration of Moscow”, Holtzapffel’s “Sinbad” which came to him missing half of Sinbad’s face and thus required challenging artwork as well as skilful cutting to restore and another Holtzapffel “At The White Hart” that needed 17 replacement pieces making.

Barrie Hudson-Peacock’s wrote about his extensive Peacock Puzzle Box collection, spanning the period 1853-1924 (See photo at top of picture accompanying previous post) article and Jackie Armstrong celebrated the reported revival in the general popularity of games and in jigsaws in particular, now included in the UK’s official shopping basket. Among other articles were those that covered Tom Tyler’s talk on Lady Charlotte Finch, 18th century royal governess for three decades, who used jigsaws as part of her education of the royal children, Tom’s sole copy of a proposed  but unpublished Wentworth puzzle of a painting of The Herzogen Cecile, the 1936 Australia to England Grain Race winning square rigged sailing ship that subsequently sank near Salcombe , and a note on celebrity puzzle enthusiasts Patrick Stewart and Bill and Melinda Gates.

A bumper edition indeed!

Hearty thanks to Bernard & Colleen Shambrook who hosted the Spring meeeting and AGM in a light spacious hall in Normandy, near Guildford in Surrey. Around 30 members attended, including some not so regulars, so a good time had by all – Brian and Jill Price’s sales table attracted lots of interest in particular.

The theme for the day was “Boats”. Attendees enjoyed assembling a good selection of puzzles, including some of chairman David Shearer’s more challenging puzzle library ones (not all of which were quite finished!), an interesting Show and Tell session – the boating theme being, as is often the case, quite loosely interpreted by some! – and a presentation from John Hyde of some his favourite Venice puzzles.

The Show and Tell featured, among others, a range of puzzles from Salmon, Chad Valley, AVN Jones South African Series, W.G. Evans, Frederick Warne, Waddington’s, Wentworth, Raphael Tuck, Picture Puzzles, Valentine’s, Philmar, and cutters Rob Garner, Andrew Kershaw and both Peter and Enid Stocken.

As is often the case, the Spring 2017 magazine led with an account of the previous quarterly meeting and also contained a full page account of the Show and Tell session along with two and a half pages of colour pictures of puzzles shown there (see previous post for more details).

Following regular entries Chairman’s Chatter and Editor’s Notes were lots of other very interesting articles of varying length, covering a broad range of puzzle-related content. Christopher Turner contributed a very interesting and informed two page article on the history and philosophy of jigsaw puzzling, centred around his grandfather, cutter Dick Sawbridge, who cut many puzzles for the Queen and once fooled the old TV game show “What’s My Line?” panel of celebrities when they failed to guess his hobby after their allotted number of questions ran out! Jacques Velu explained how he is now able to make his own replacement pieces using a small milling machine linked to his PC.

Editor Brian Sulman included an article of his own, “More Unusual Salmon Puzzles” which include “The Changing Picture”, a jigsaw with some interchangeable parts that create two different pictures. Martin and Frances Harper wrote about The Northern Picture Puzzle Exchange, operated from around the beginning of WW1 until his death in 1929 by a cutter called David Dippie Dixon from a Northumberland mansion, Cragside, now a National Trust property and Alan Sudbury followed up on the Winter meeting with an article on Simpkin Marshall’s Sport and Travel series of puzzles.

Harold Hill near Romford was the location for the last meeting of 2017. Following the usual introduction from Chairman David Shearer, attendees enjoyed the morning puzzling and checking out the sales tables. After lunch a brief committee meeting discussed the upcoming House Party weekend in Bournemouth and venues and topics for future quarterly meetings. Everyone then gathered together for the main event of the day, the Show and Tell session on the theme of “Winter – but not Christmas!”

The topic encouraged a wide range of puzzles. Host, Julia kicked off with a 1930’s Vera Ski Jumper puzzle. Among others shown were a J.Salmon selection, “Returning from Market” by Richard Dadd, two from Waddington’s, two cut by Enid Stocken, several Wentworths including a Special Edition, “Snowflakes” featuring a host of penguins, a set of 12 cut from a calendar by Meredith Worsfold, two from Springbok and a Giles puzzle. Favourite presenter John Hyde once again produced a lovely display of mounted puzzles and President Tom Tyler rounded off the session including a fine selection featuring trains in winter. Most interestingly, the session also included many of Simpkin Marshall Ltd.’s Sport and Travel series, rarely seen together.

More tea and cakes followed as members worked on completing as many puzzles as possible before the meeting eventually came to a close. Many thanks to Julia for setting up the meeting in a suitably fitting location.

As well as several articles on the September meeting (see previous post), Issue 122 contained another dozen or so articles on a wide range of puzzling topics and four full colour pages of puzzles discussed in them.

Among these, Terry Walters reported on a framed massive 24,000 piece “World’s Largest Puzzle” purchased, put together and donated to the local Balloon Museum and John Hyde added to two previous articles on Collecting as a hobby. Emma Jenkinson shared her experiences of winning the first British Championships at the Newmarket Jigsaw Festival in 2013 and more recently coming second and, best of all, while participating, discovering the BCD. Helen Stevenson and Martin Norgate contributed articles on jigsaws in museums and chairman David a short piece on a fascinatingly cut and colourful Hampton Court puzzle. In his Chairman’s Chatter, David also mentioned next February’s Bournemouth House Party Weekend which will include a full programme of puzzling activity including a Show & Tell theme of “My Favourite Two Advertising or Story-Telling Puzzles”.

Two of the longer articles were about a really interesting collection of monkey puzzles and toys put together by Gillian Kernon to celebrate this year as the Chinese year of the Monkey and Brian Sulman’s account of an unusual Salmon series of three interchangeable jig-saw puzzles, “The Mad Tea Party”, “The Bruin Boys” and “Cook and Her Policeman”.

The day at Coddington started with a visit from Simon and Peter Stocken with some of their very complex wooden puzzles. The highlight of these was a large framed 3D puzzle of Sir Walter Raleigh returning from his travels and bursting through the canvas! Simon created this for the Queen for her Golden Jubilee in 2002 and calls it “I’m Home, Ma’am”. He told the group of a catastrophic collapse of the puzzle while touring it in the US. It has over 2,500 pieces and Simon sadly bagged them all up to bring home. Several years later he rebuilt it and then deconstructed it, taking a photograph each time he removed a piece and then strung all the pictures together to make a construction manual for the puzzle and a fascinating video, now to be found on Youtube by searching for “Sir Walter Raleigh – I’m Home Ma’am”.

The Show and Tell theme was “Fascinating Cuts and Beautiful Places”. Among the puzzles shown were a Jeremy puzzle of a town market street with their characteristic animal whimsies, a Michele Wilson 350 piece aerial view of Balinese terraces, a Heather Prydderch pre-Raphaelite “St.Bride carried by Angels” and a Howard Smeeton panoramic “Glen Affric” puzzle.

Thanks to Jackie and David who organised the meeting in the lovely hall at the local community centre and for bringing along a wealth of puzzles both for attendees to assemble during the day and to present at Show and Tell. Thanks also to all who baked or brought the lovely cakes that everyone enjoyed!

Like its counterpart issue a year earlier, the Autumn 2016 Issue 121 had a lovely cover colour picture and included a further 7 pages of colour photographs of many of the puzzles discussed in the articles it contained. The cover photo was of an appropriately autumnal 700 piece push-fit puzzle titled “The Gleaners”, the picture having being taken from a cut-down Ovaltine poster.

After chairman David Shearer’s “Chairman’s Chatter”, Jo Tyler kicked the issue off with an account of the recent June meeting held in Grayswood Village Hall, Surrey, followed by an account of the meeting’s “Underground, Overground …” Show and Tell session. Articles from members on a variety of topics followed including Part 6 of David Shearer’s “The wanderings of the Jigasaurus” about an interesting collection of over 50 old puzzles he had recently acquired that required a lot of sorting and unjumbling!, a profile of one of the few current French cutters, Genest Desfosses, Le Colimacon (The Snail), two articles by Jackie Armstrong on a Goya painting featuring an early jigsaw puzzle and a jigsaw puzzle race she had participated in and Stephen Smith’s piece on A V N Jones Australian and South African puzzles series.

Also of note in this issue was a photo of member Geert Bekkering receiving the coveted John Spilsbury Award from the Association for Games and Puzzles International (AGPI). Our congratulations to Geert!

A lovely light spacious Grayswood Village Hall just to the North East of Haslemere was the venue for the June meeting. Sadly, long-time member and organiser John Jenvey was ill and couldnt join us but our thanks to him for arranging the day. Just over 30 members, including several newcomers, attended and enjoyed some stimulating puzzling, a challenging “Underground, Overground …” Show & Tell session and an interesting “Rivers” puzzles talk from stalwart speaker, John Hyde.

Among the puzzles displayed for the Show & Tell session were two different Chad Valley Wookey Hole puzzles and two of Holzapffel’s splendid Figure It Out series, “Bluebird” and “Quality Street”. Two others brought along for members to put together on the day, a 1375 piece “The Businessman’s London” and a lovely vibrantly coloured deco-style “Underground”, depicting the occupants of an underground carriage, proved too tricky to complete in time, but were completed after the meeting and pictures of them included in BCD magazine Issue 121.

Highlights of the Rivers talk were “The River of Life” – a Meredith Worsfold cut puzzle of a Tiffany stained glass window, a superb 1000 piece Raphael Tuck puzzle “Valley of the Shenandoah” – a magnificent painting of the Virginian river by Scottish artist Andrew Melrose and a particular favourite of John’s, “River Thames from The Yacht Inn at Greenwich”.

Newsletter number 120 arrived in June with a host of interesting articles and photographs including reports of the March meeting/AGM at Leverstock (see previous post).

David’s Part 5 of his “Wanderings of the Jigasaurus” series focused on the quite rare “Bildajig” range of 3D jigsaw puzzle models, manufactured by Scottish Toys Ltd of Glasgow in the 1930’s. He had thought they comprised a series of 3 black-hulled models of a tug boat, a cargo liner and a passenger, each being made up of a series of layers that stack on top of each other, each of which is its own mini-jigsaw puzzle. Add in wooden funnels and masts and metal ventilators and you have a fine model of a sea-going vessel! He has now discovered that there’s a fourth model in the series, having recently acquired a white-hulled variation of the passenger liner. In a second article, David followed up on Tom’s piece in the last issue on collecting as a hobby and encouraged other members to do likewise. Brian also added an account of his own highly developed “collecting gene”.

Jackie Armstrong contributed two articles, one on “Big Jigsaws” and the second in response to the photo of a puzzle of “John Gilpin’s Ride to Where” in the last issue. John Hyde too responded to this with details and photos of his own John Gilpin puzzle and his original copy of Randolph Caldecott’s 1878 “Picture Book” that featured the rhyming story of John Gilpin’s wedding anniversary ride to The Bell Inn at Edmonton.

Barrie wrote about another extremely rare puzzle he was recently pleased to acquire, “Exodus of Israel from Egypt” by E.J.Peacock who opened the Peacock firm in 1853 but did not stick around too long. Consequently, to the best of Barrie’s knowledge only 3 other puzzles made by him exist in the world!

Finally, on a lighter note, from Martin Norgate, came “Jigsaws are the stuff of Life” – in the form of ice cubes, ginger biscuits and a birthday cake depicting (very roughly) a theological map of the world from Medieval times!

Around 35 members, including some new faces, attended the March meeting where the Show & Tell theme was “Flying High”. As well as this and the annual AGM, on the agenda were tea, cakes, sales tables, and a short talk from John on what he calls “rotten” puzzles – those old puzzles with missing or badly repaired/replaced pieces!

As usual, the Show and Tell session produced a really nice and varied selection of puzzles. David showed several puzzles including a difficult Stocken Montgolfier balloon blasting off, a cardboard puzzle of Commonwealth flags and a Holtzapffel Figure=It=Out Sinbad puzzle featuring a giant Roc. Tom’s contribution included Swallows, an Edwardian bi-plane and two WWII puzzles – an Arrow Battle of Britain and another of a Hawker Hurricane. Planes of generations before and after these featured on other puzzles discussed – The Spirit of St.Louis, flown solo across the Atlantic by Charles Lindbergh and Concorde, from Wentworth.