September saw us meeting at a rather special location, Harborne, just 500 yards from where, having started as a stationers in the 19th century, Chad Valley started producing toys, games and puzzles in the early 1900’s and continued successfully for more than half a century. Appropriately, as well as the usual Show & Tell jigsaw puzzle session, host Phil Stokes also treated us to a look at some of his other other Chad Valley toys, games and puzzle collection – see pictures in post above and details below for more on this.
Among the highlights of the “Film and Theatre” Show & Tell session were three impressive Holtzapffel Figure=It=Out puzzles. David shared a 120 piece “Falstaff” he had acquired in an unmarked box, John had brought “Bo Peep”, from a London panto poster and Pete showed “The Girl From Ciro’s”, from a poster from a show performed at The Garrick in London in 1916.
Other puzzles shared by attendees included Gillian’s box set of 6 puzzles published by the Dutch Van Leer & Co showing monkeys dressed in court dress, titled “Theatre des Animaux Savant” (Theatre of Knowing Animals), Lynne’s AVM & Co “Mrs Jarley of the Travelling Waxworks”, a character from Dicken’s novel “The Old Curiosity Shop” and Jackie’s impressive Puzzlewood, “Much Ado About Nothing At The Globe” expertly cut by Heather Prydderch.
John also showed one of his favourites, the 1920s push fit of Renoir’s “La Loge”, now in the The Courtauld Gallery in London, but included in the first ever exhibition of Impressionist art in 1874 that established Renoir as an Impressionist artist. The picture depicts a couple in a box at the opera – the place to be seen on the Paris social scene of the times – the woman in the picture being a famous Parisienne model.
Heather followed John with a great puzzle of “Harry Potter’s Cupboard”, taken from the new series of illustrated editions by Jim Kay and then Brownen showed one of Portmeirion in relief – fitting the session’s theme through its connection with the cult TV program, “The Prisoner”
Host Phil’s three puzzles included a 300 piece theatre-related puzzle, “Twelfth Night”, one of only three Chad Valley Shakespearean scene puzzles and Pete ended the session with “West End Scandals”, also from a show at The Garrick in the 1930s and “Le Clownesse”, a 1000 piece Vera Arte Moderne puzzle of the beautifully coloured Toulouse-Lautrec 1895 painting of a female clown called Cha-U-Khao.
Phil’s started his additional Chad Valley chat with a nice collection of their promotional dexterity and other puzzles, produced for companies such as Oxo, Birds Eye, The Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch. He followed this with a lovely set of late 1930’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarf dolls, a 1935 “ Three Little Pigs” jigsaw set, and then a Pinocchio race game dated around 1940 . He closed with a 1950 board game designed by Emile Littler, a renowned theatrical impresario, with previous connections with Chad Valley related to pantomime dolls two of which Phil showed us – ‘FRIDAY’ from the 1938 ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘JACK’ from the pantomime ‘Jack and Jill’. Thanks to Phil and Jean for hosting what turned out to be a most pleasant and interesting day in Harborne.