Imagine my delight when I discovered this box among some games and puzzles belonging to my maternal grandparents (though this actually belongs to my Great Aunt, but I'm not giving it back). The red is actually more brick red than the bright red my scanner interpreted it as. It's from the 1920s maybe early 1930s.
Of course when I assembled it, it looked like this:
Maybe the witch lives in that house, or is the person setting out in the blue sailboat, or on one of the missing pieces. Who am I trying to kid? This is not a puzzle of a witch. It was a bit tricky as far as puzzles go though. If you click on the picture for a closer look, you'll see how the puzzle was cut into the most bizarre and random shapes possible, not two of which actually interlocked.
So why call it a witch puzzle if it's actually a puzzle depicting some waterfront scenery? If you look closer, the cover of the box labels this puzzle as an "art picture." This lack of specificity must have made it hard to choose one, or even harder to choose a second without concern you were buying the exact same puzzle. As to the witch aspect...
Even back then, Salem was clearly promoting itself as the witch city in some capacity, or at least the Salem Chemical and Supply Co. was.
So the puzzle was a bust, but I still really like the box.
5 comments:
Wow...very cool find indeed. I laughed about the lack of a witch in the witch puzzle....made me think of 'Where's Waldo' for some reason. However I've been duped just recently myself with an outer cover promising "Halloween HiJinx" when inside the video, only one of the six Tom & Jerry cartoons even came close to being Halloween related and that was the one that had a witch in it. The rest of the CD had nothing at all to do with Halloween. I think both of these items qualify as deceptive advertising...ha! Although the cover of the witch puzzle is very cool and vintage in it's own right.
I'm as puzzled (uh, sorry) about a company named "...Chemical and Supply" making puzzles.
That is really cool. What a great story of how you have it from your family and you put it together and then shared it with us.....very special!
Thanks so much!
Cheers!
I could tell right away that it wasn't going to turn out to be an image of a witch, but like Baba Yaga who is compelled to count the straws in a broom, if I come across a jigsaw puzzle in progress, I'm compelled to finish it, even if it's at someone else's house and they don't want me to.
It sort of reminds me of a Thomas Kinkade style painting
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