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.