Our first ever virtual BCD Show & Tell was a great success. There were over 30 members on the call including participants from England, Scotland, Wales, USA, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden – a truly international assembly! About a dozen of us managed to successfully share and talk about our puzzles on the theme “My Country”. See the Gallery page for photos of all the puzzles shown.
David A. kicked us off with three puzzles on the theme of the City of London followed by David P. showing “The Signing of The Magna Carta” and Enid Stocken’s “Launching of the S.S. Great Britain in July 1843 in Bristol dock”. Heather followed with four of her own puzzles, including a 317 piece 3D puzzle view of “Snowdon”, a 300 piece “Flowers Map” of Great Britain and a busy colourful, “Lavenham Morris” showing a colourful group of Morris dancers with locals hanging out of their windows enjoying the show. She finished with a 630 piece , layered 3D puzzle “Contoured Wales”. Ian shared a Beraton country cottage scene, a lovely 358 piece Zig Zag puzzle, “The Nations Jewels”, a beautiful personification of Britannia with her children painted by Eva Hollyer and a 400 piece Victory Gold Box Artistic of “Trafalgar Square”.
Jeanne started with a puzzle of her home location, “New Railroad & County Map of New England”, followed by two more American puzzles, a 650 piece Par puzzle of a Norman Rockwell image, “Boss of The Road” and “Spring Blossoms”, a lovely push fit cut by Isabel Ayer, sold in Boston, Massachusetts, under her Picture Puzzle Exchange brand.
John’s first puzzle was one of the more collectable Chad Valley GWR puzzles, “Locos in the Making”, and his second a tremendous old 1920s, 1000 piece line cut, push-fit and challenging puzzle, “Dutch Courage”. Penny showed just one puzzle, a lovely Victory artistic Gold Box, 1000 piece “Danish Invaders (Historical)”.
Tom began with the oldest puzzle in his collection, John Wallis’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”. Made in 1790 and featured on Plate 13, pages 22/23 of Linda Hannas’s “The English Jigsaw Puzzle 1760 to 1890”. Wout shared four puzzles, all from the Netherlands including “Sneeuw-landschap” (Snow landscape), probably cut in the 1920s, into 179 plywood pieces, with a very interesting push fit, angular cut, the entire puzzle having only two continuous cut lines.
Emma shared her collection of National Trust (NT) mini-Wentworth 40-piece puzzles, and Jackie started with another Wentworth, a 500 piece, “Pendle in May. She continued with a 1100 piece panoramic photo of “Glen Affric and the Victory Gold Box Super Cut, 1000pc “Envoy to the Mogul. Robin showed two very interesting Victorian puzzles bought blind from an auction in Yorkshire, a stunning 1850 “Railway Scenes” and an equally fascinating “Scenes in India”, made by John Betts around the middle of C19th. 
Bibbi had a 300 piece JLE-Puzzle from her native Sweden ,“Frilufstliv vid stranden” (Outdoor life by the Beach), and Pete rounded off with John Wallis’s 1798 puzzle “England Dissected on the Best Principles for Teaching Geography, one of four 340 piece cardboard puzzles of The Beatles made in the mid-1960s by Brian Epstein’s NEMS and last but not least a small 150 piece old amateur cut puzzle “Idle Moments” showing a typical rural English scene.