The Summer edition of the magazine covered an interesting variety of puzzling-related topics ranging from the recent sale of an original Spilsbury puzzle to an offer of a large, if just a little incomplete, Victory Gold box puzzle free to a good home!
Anne Williams reported that John Spilsbury’s 1767, “Asia in its Principal Divisions”, hand-coloured engraved map pasted on to wood and dissected along country borders into just under 40 pieces, sold at auction in Winchester in July for almost £2,500! Ann also wrote a piece on the recent donation of 1500 games and jigsaws to the Bodleian Library in Oxford by collector Richard Ballam and went on to explain the significance of the Bodleian’s position as one of the world’s major centres for the study of games, puzzles and other aspects of childhood play and learning.
Jackie Armstrong contributed two articles: the first on “Show & Tell Items – Made Up or In Boxes?” and a second longer piece on the increasingly popular “Traditional Wooden Jigsaws” Flickr group that she started in 2012. In the article she also included links to pictures of each of of her favourite 30 puzzles from the site. Brian Sulman discussed more of his extensive Salmon puzzle collection, this time covering those featuring Meccano advertisements on the box lids.
Two guest written articles were also included. The first from Jill Davis described the first Kedington Jigsaw Festival that she and a willing team of helpers successfully put on in May and the second, from Ruth Atkin, told all about “Just Jigsaws”, a community group who meet weekly in Wimborne library to do puzzles together as well as enjoy a cup of tea and a piece of cake!
Rounding off the edition was John Hyde’s offer of a 1700 piece puzzle of the famous “Gloriana Reviews Her Fleet” painting, sadly missing 8 pieces but too good to throw away!