This Saturday you're getting a double dose of vintage puzzles. My mother is writing about her vintage puzzle collection in her blog, Kotkarankki. My collection is really just the result of some of her collection migrating North. I'll let my mother tell you more about the history of these puzzles. All these puzzles were originally my grandmother's, and they have the most tedious puzzle pieces on Earth.
The person making this little kitchen maid puzzle must have looked for the blackest painting available, and the pieces seem to follow the logic that the two pieces that look like the least likely match are a match. The puzzle has only 160 pieces, but it still takes a ridiculously long time to finish even for someone who finishes 1000-piece-puzzles in a day or two (three max, if I practice self control).
Lots of lovely old boxes were reused for puzzles, but the brown paper one is actually an original puzzle box, so no hope of ever finding a helpful illustration on the cover of the box.
This puzzle was apparently amazingly wonderful as there are two of these, now appropriately one for me and one for my mother.
A few years ago my mother built a bunch of puzzles, took photos, and printed them to be folded inside the boxes. These puzzles are hard enough even with the photos. The boxes usually include a handwritten name, the number of pieces, and a note of whether or not all pieces are present. The Swimmer has had all 163 pieces in January 1984 (when I was still in my mother's belly), in November 1990, and they're still here in May 2016. Good job, grandmother, mother and me!
As a child this Giselle puzzle was my favourite. I was definitely going through a phase then where tragic love stories and gorgeous dresses were a thing. Oh wait, it wasn't a phase, they still are!
This is a rare bird as it has that big illustrated box, but the pieces are still those wiggly difficult ones. Giselle is also a bit larger than the others, and the pieces are of better quality wood (some of the other ones are actually depression era cardboard). Fancy things come from England - the others, I believe, were made in Finland.
I planned to take a photo of my modern puzzle collection to accompany these puzzles, but came to the conclusion it is not healthy to own that many puzzles and decided not to share that dark side of me.