The BCD

The 16-page Spring 2016 newsletter brought us reports from the Reigate “Rumpus”, the December meeting (see previous post for more on that), early news of the next bi-annual BCD House Party weekend to be held in Bournemouth in February 2017 and a wealth of other articles.

Cliff Maddock supplied a thought-provoking interesting article “Too much of a good thing? or ‘Am i still a dissectologist?’, discussing both his collecting and puzzling and his perceived observation that the more ‘active’ current BCD members are perhaps more interested in the ‘challenge of the cut’ of a puzzle rather than the sheer enjoyment of its picture !

John Hyde wrote about the Christmas puzzles he presented at the Reigate meeting. Pete Day contributed an article on Clarence Lawson Wood, prolific, mostly humorous, artist and illustrator. David Shearer added another chapter in his “Wanderings of the Jigasaurus” series focusing on two library puzzles cut by Enid Stocken and Eric Bond, and their puzzlers’ comments on having assembled them.

This issue also included the regular members’ “Jigsaw Sales and Wants” insert, minutes and financial summary from the March AGM and a page of updates/amendments to the BCD Membership List.

Terrible weather but a great turnout of 45 members and some “fiendishly difficult” puzzles characterised the Reigate meeting hosted by John Hyde.

The theme was “Christmas” and a splendid display of puzzles were discussed during the Show and Tell session and the day rounded off with a further impressive display of Christmas puzzles from John’s own extensive collection.

Among the puzzles shown were Pete’s lovely Enid Stocken “Come and Worship” and one of Helen’s favourites, “Christmas at Dingley Dell” by Frank Reynolds featuring many Dickens characters. Sally brought a Wentworth promotional puzzle showing the 1988 Radio Times Christmas cover. David rounded off the session with several puzzles including a colourful “Christmas Day” triptych and a Meredith Worsfold cut “Christmas Eve – A Dream”

John’s presentation included several lovely Pears print puzzles (see picture included in next article) as well as lots of other beautiful and interesting puzzles. These included Holtazpffel’s Figure=It=Out “Dick Whittington” and another pantomime puzzle “Close to Midnight” cut by Lady Beatrice Wilkinson. He finished off with a “final curiosity” entitled “Privacy” showing the Royal Family enjoying Christmas at Sandringham, with the Queen, just a little girl, clutching her teddy bear, in the foreground!

The Winter 2015 edition of the BCD magazine comprised a dozen pages of interesting articles including two colour pages of pictures of some of the puzzles mentioned in them. A highlight was an article discussing two very interesting WW2 puzzles: the first “Seven Card-Playing Dogs”, each representing one of the countries involved in the struggle, was secretly produced by PRESISTO in Amsterdam during the war itself and proceeds from its sale used by the underground movement to feed Jews in hiding; the second, manufactured by USN from The Hague, shows the people of Amsterdam standing on the rooftops waving to planes dropping food parcels. School children were given the puzzle in May 1945 to celebrate the liberation.

Puzzle historian Anne Williams contributed a short piece about the hundreds of pre-1900 English children’s puzzles and games that have crossed the Atlantic to be housed in the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University in New Jersey. This collection also includes the best collection of 18th century Spilsbury puzzles in private ownership.

Another member, a lover of jigsaw research and catalogues, shared two pages of jigsaw puzzle advertisements from a reprint of a 1913 Gamages catalogue. On the lighter side, regular contributor Jo Tyler gave us an amusing account of his Master and Missus’ disastrously unsuccessful attempt to win a 1000 piece puzzle competition at a Jigsaw Puzzle festival in Newmarket!

Among the other articles in this issue were also a few on the recent September Cheltenham meeting – see the previous post for more information about that gathering’s proceedings.

Lovely autumn weather for it but with a “How does the cut of a jigsaw affect the difficulty of making it?” theme, the Cheltenham meeting provided the 30 or so members who attended with a nice variety of interesting challenges. David had brought along some British Library puzzles specifically identified as high ranking in difficulty and so they proved to be. Furthermore, for the first time, those who did manage to complete a puzzle were asked to attempt to describe to the group the difficult aspects of its composition.

Among the puzzles presented in the Show and Tell session, were a nice Holtzapffel Figure=It=Out, “The Chocolate Soldier”, a tricky Eric Bond push fit, “Henny Penny”, a complicatedly cut “Muddy Farm Lane” (probably by Chandos), a modern Dutch puzzle made by Hauseman and Holte, ” The English Cottage Garden” with many false straight edges and “La Parisienne Japonaise”, shown by Terry (aka Grandpa T.J.), a beautiful and tricky to assemble 3D puzzle he had cut himself.

Thanks to Pearl and Sally for a meeting that created a real buzz and was enjoyed by all.

Issue 117 published in the autumn with a great cover colour picture of a lovely 3D puzzle cut by Terry Waters for the 2013 Bournemouth House Party and enjoyably put together again at the Peterborough House Party in February. As well as the usual “Chairman’s Chatter”, reports of proceedings and the “Library Puzzles” and “Interesting Cardboard Puzzles” Show and Tell session from the recent Sherborne meeting, this bumper issue was dominated by articles on many of the interesting sessions held at the Peterborough House Party: Tom Tyler’s after dinner thoughts on the first 30 years of the BCD; the Show and Tell session on “My most interesting puzzles”; The Stocken Family – a talk with cutting demonstration by Peter and Simon Stocken; chairman David Shearer on the Holtzappfel “Figure=It=Out” series and, finally, John Hyde’s entertaining Maps puzzles session. All were complemented by 7 pages of wonderful colour photographs of a wide variety of interesting, challenging and beautiful puzzles!

In his session, Tom described how the BCD had come into existence back in October 1985 when a few collectors who met at toy fairs discovered that they had a common interest in jigsaw puzzles, agreed to meet for a jigsaw party and then to form a group whose prime interests were jigsaws, food and drink! Long may it last!!

David described in some detail the history of both the Holtzapffel company’s 25 year period of jigsaw production, highlighting their spectacular “Figure=It=Out” series, but also their 162 year history of manufacturing high quality woodworking and wood-turning equipment.

Nicki Barker hosted a most enjoyable June meeting in the village hall at Thornford near Sherborne. Attendees enjoyed their day, assembling puzzles, browsing the sales tables , catching up with friends and consuming cups of tea and coffee accompanied by plenty of cake!

The afternoon’s Show and Tell session had two themes: Jigsaw Puzzle Library puzzles, a subject of great interest to Nicki herself as well as chairman David Shearer who now also runs the British Jigsaw Puzzle Libary, and “Interesting Card Puzzles”, a subject that produced an equally varied display of puzzles to see and discuss.

The cardboard puzzles shown included a US lake view one by Tuco, die cut using thick card similar to that used for wallboard by an American construction company and a 1930’s Daily Mail partly-interlocking competition puzzle with a then enormous £3,000 prize for naming the 14 films pictured in it!

On the library puzzle theme, Jackie showed a member’s report from a Newport Library puzzle and among puzzles discussed were a Pears Print “Family Worship” from Miss Hobson’s Club in Spalding and two from the British Puzzle Library, “Two Points of View” and Enid Stocken’s “Spinning Wool”.

Tom also showed and discussed Chad Valley’s “Dragonsland”, a puzzle with all but the outer frame comprised of a spectacular variety of colourful whimsies.

The summer 2015 edition of the newsletter included several articles on the Leverstock Green meeting/AGM held in March including a report on its 30 year B.C.D. anniversary show and tell session. It also contained, among others, articles from Jackie Armstrong on classifying cardboard puzzles, a jointly written piece by Terry Walters (the cutter, aka Grandpa TJ) and Bronwen Lewis (the puzzle-solver) detailing a blow by blow account of Bronwen’s eventually successful process of solving a very tricky Nuremberg Trial puzzle and a debut article from Pete Day on The Bystander magazine and Frederick Warne series of Bruce Bairnsfather WW1 “Fragments From France” puzzles. Bairnsfather spent some of his “leisure” time in the trenches sketching humorous cartoons of the life there. So morale-boosting for the troops were his efforts that, after recovering from serious injuries in the second Battle of Ypres, to his astonishment, was appointed as the War Office’s officially licensed humorous cartoonist! He spent the remainder of the war as such, both back in action zones and in the US speaking and fund-raising on behalf of the Allied cause.

The 2015 AGM & meeting was hosted by long-standing member and former BCD secretary, Barbara Middlethorp and had as its theme “30 years celebration of the BCD”. Perhaps because we held our 6th Weekend House Party only 3 weeks before, attendance was lower than usual. Nevertheless, those who attended enjoyed plenty of tea, many delightful cakes and some very interesting puzzling.

Perhaps the highlight of the Show and Tell session was a beautifully coloured and very difficult 1100 piece puzze of a map of Ceylon cut by the great Enid Stocken. Other puzzles shown included a Waddington’s puzzle book sold in aid of The Red Cross and St.John’s Ambulance Service, a very interesting 1912/13 puzzle of “John Gilpin’s Ride to Where?” featuring Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill among its riders, a tricky coronation of Edward VII puzzle that a meeting 10 years or so ago had failed to complete and 1954 Victory promotion puzzle celebrating 150 years of the Challen Piano company.

The Spring edition of the BCD quarterly newsletter was very efficiently produced to go out just in advance of our 2015 weekend House Party near Peterborough. As well as the standard meeting reports, forthcoming programme, Sales & Wants etc., there was also a wonderfully diverse selection of material contributed from the readership, including one on Peacock-branded Postcard Puzzles, another entitled “A window on our Domestic History” and a fascinating piece on “Airships in Nisterland”.

Chairman David Shearer’s previous article, published in issue number 114 and  describing his “Perfect Puzzle & Why”, had certainly prompted some follow up material for this latest issue, as indeed did Julia Nenova’s piece on the comparison between wood and cardboard puzzles, so fingers crossed that these debates continue to stimulate further material for forthcoming publications too!

With over 50 guests appearing at The Orton Hall Hotel next week, along with a great line-up of displays and speakers, there is sure to be plenty more to report over the coming few editions. This will also be an opportunity for the BCD to celebrate its 30th Anniversary, with a “Show & Tell” theme to encourage members to bring along up to two puzzles which have relevance to this milestone on the club’s history.

The hall of St. Augustine’s Church in Chelmsford was the venue for our final meeting of 2014 and proved itself a perfect setting for hostess Marie to have chosen for us all. The attendance was a little down on our expectations but, for the thirty or so guests who did make the journey, there was plenty to see and do, with several well-stocked sales tables to help us swell our collections!

“Modes of Transport” was the theme for the puzzles on display and this brought out a rich variety of material to grace the Show & Tell tables, with examples depicting a range of transportation means including airships, camel trains, ocean-going liners, bicycles, Shanks’ pony and even a magic-carpet! Isn’t it great to see the lengths some members are prepared to go to in their interpretations of the chosen topic? Come and have a go if you fancy it.

Also on hand today was one of our favourite speakers who had brought along a puzzle depicting “Diana of the Uplands” painted around 1903-1904 by the artist Charles Wellington Furze, in which his wife Katherine acted as model. She went on to lead a highly distinguished career as head of the VAD nurses and WRNS.

This was also the first time out for a new idea, that of a “Q and A” table on which members could bring along puzzles which they would like to try and learn more about. It seems highly likely that we have, within our collective experiences, lots of answers to a lot of questions if we can only communicate them suitably. More on this as it develops, but please give it your support. If we don’t find answers on the day, we can hopefully promote the questions in future newsletters and appeal to the wider readership as well. Thanks.