MAPS

October 26th, 2016

Title: World Map, 1630

Manufacturer:  Pomegranate

Pieces:  1000

Movie:  Unknown 

If there's one thing I love more than puzzles, its maps.  I love looking at maps, any maps.  I love looking at Googlemaps, city maps, bus route maps, hand drawn maps on a napkin, whatever.  Show me a map and I'll spend some time studying it.  Naturally, doing a map jigsaw puzzle was pretty fun for me, and a handful more will be popping up later.  Some, like this one, are fairly easy, but some of them are surprisingly difficult.

The company that made this puzzle is called Pomegranate.  The only reason to bring this up is because, as of right now, this is the only Pomegranate puzzle I have done.  Not that there was anything I didn't like about it, but it seems like they mostly do puzzles of paintings and other artwork (like this old map).  For the most part, I usually stick pictures of the natural world.  Castles, boats, houses, mountains is my usual endeavor, with a few exceptions.

Returning to the topic of how I recovered the pertinent information about puzzle, there's basically two ways I've been able to figure out who the puzzle manufacturer was: finding it online, or, more commonly, finding the puzzle again at a thrift store.  My basic routine is to go to a thrift store, buy a puzzle, do a puzzle, then donate back to a thrift store.  I'm guessing others have this same routine since I will find old puzzles at a different store than I left them.  I'm sure some of them where just another copy of the same puzzle, but mostly they are old enough that I'm certain they are the same one.

Beginnings

According to family members, I apparently started putting together jigsaw puzzles when I was around three or so years old.  I obviously have no memory of this but, but I have heard the story about my mom and I doing a puzzle, and I was holding and piece, looking for where it belonged.  My mom kept telling me "higher, higher", and I lifted my arm above my head and gave her a wry smile.

My early puzzles were all easy, 100-300 piece fare, like Spider-Man, Disney, Looney Tunes, He-Man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

     

We had a couple of more difficult ones, like Dracula and Star Wars, that I'm pretty sure I at least attempted, though I doubt I ever finished.  I also distinctly remember an Alien puzzle that was of the Space Jockey that I found a little scary.

I spent the majority of the next 30 odd years not really doing any puzzles at all, and if I did, it was dusting these old ones off for nostalgia's sake.  I had one flirtation with a 3000 piece puzzle of Sistine Chapel ceiling, but I soon realized that I was both unable to fit the puzzle on my coffee table, and lacked the patience and experience to put tackle such a difficult puzzle.

A few years after the Sistine Chapel debacle, I decided to purchase a puzzle on a whim at my local Goodwill.  I could not have realized what I had started...