Ulla Von Brandenburg Puzzle 
by Guest Writer Roberta Shore

We invite you to read Roberta Shore's review on the following jigsaw puzzle. Since she has discovered the advantages of jigsaw puzzling, she has reviewed/journaled several that will be available on this website.  

You may like this image by the same Clemens Habicht Puzzle Company Amazon link

Ulla Von Brandenburg Puzzle - Roberta's Review

Ulla Von Brandenburg Artists' Edition: Palais De Tokyo Clemens Habicht Colour Puzzles / The Play Group Ribbon Cut
1024 Pieces

Finished Dimension: 25” Square
Roberta-Profile
Ulla Von Brandenburg Artists' Edition: Palais De Tokyo Clemens Habicht Colour Puzzles / The Play Group Ribbon Cut
1024 Pieces

Finished Dimension: 25” Square

Ulla Von Brandenburg Artists' Edition: Palais De Tokyo Clemens Habicht Colour Puzzles / The Play Group Ribbon Cut
1024 Pieces

Finished Dimension: 25” Square

My Confident Newbie Difficulty Rating: Extreme for sure!

Difficulty Level (from a published product description): Extreme

I saw this puzzle and had to have it. As a graphic designer, it totally appealed to my work aesthetic, dimensional and bold. As a puzzler, it had all the style qualities I enjoy most — large areas of similar color. It would take time, but the areas were certainly well defined — how difficult could it be?

A note about the installation from which this puzzle was based: ‘The artist’s work is a series of curtains with circular holes, installed in the entrance to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, as a part of one of her solo exhibitions.’

Quality: Negatives were false fits and loose piece fit - hard to get past those, especially with this puzzle. But otherwise, there were no outstanding quality issues. The sturdy square box was an odd size, 8” x 8” x 3.5”. There was no poster, but the box top had a full illustration with a good color match to the pieces. There was just a bit of puzzle dust. The solid, low sheen pieces had a nice thickness. None were damaged, together uncut, or missing. More about the pieces in the Construction section.

Getting started: Find the edge pieces and sort by color. No reason to change my mind about how straightforward this puzzle would set up. Clearly the sorting was simple enough. Somehow I ended up with way more than 11 trays of colors (edge pieces and 10 colors. Um, not exactly). I ended up sorting the lights and darks of each color - even the black was shaded with very, very dark brown and some gray. I even sub-sorted the edge pieces that had 4 shades of pink. Extreme is coming soon . . .

Construction: I found this puzzle to be a piece by piece operation; building sections to move in place was not going to happen. So, loose piece fit was only an occasional annoyance, and in some instances even a good thing. Not so for false fits - please read on.

I did not build the frame first, it did not offer any immediate help to the build. Instead, I started from near center, skipping the black, but building out from the light brown through the bright orange. I laid out the pieces by shape as I went from color to color. I was having nothing but and so much fun! Now for the golden beige . . . Extreme has arrived.

It really had little to do with the design, it was all about the piece cut. Most of the traditional pieces were represented, but the shape for each of those was very similar, often nearly the same. Add that to the expanse of the three remaining colors, and false fits were bound to be an issue. And they were. Over and over again. Just imagine pulling out pieces if the fit had been tight! I didn’t get very far from the ends of the golden beige and black areas before I was stymied, and decided to take another tack. I found all the golden beige with black and black with pink pieces and built the outlines for each section. I also put in the frame pieces that met the outer edges of the design. Seeing that structure gave me a little more confidence.

So, on with the golden beige. There was a lot of switching out pieces when progress was stalled by no piece to fill a space, but I got down to 2 pieces left. Two holes left. And just a couple pieces apart from each other. The pieces were exactly the right shape for the holes— just, well, not quite. More rearranging - I was very lucky, not having to hunt for those shapes everywhere in the golden beige section, or worse, rebuilding a major part of that section. I pulled out about a dozen pieces surrounding the holes, and switched those pieces back into the space I had made. And everything fit. Whew! After that I decided to do anything else but the black area. I took a chance and built the frame. Then I sorted out the 4 shades of background pink pieces by shape. Amazingly, surprisingly, gratefully, there were no false fits in the frame. I did have the same false fit issues filling in the pink background corners, but finally they were complete. I won’t even admit to how long the black section took to fill in. One thing I did that I thought was smart - I filled in the center black (which actually had a lot of the very dark brown) section first. I thought that if major issues showed up in the big black section, it might be solved by switching pieces out from the small section. That never happened. Other rearranging continued until the end, but the last black pieces went in without a repeat of the golden beige story. The puzzle was done!

Final thoughts: My initial reaction was exhilaration. I didn’t give up, I prevailed, I felt accomplished, even proud for my persistence. And then I realized that the whole thing was more fun than anything else. I know, crazy! But it was. I so wanted to see this amazing piece of art complete, and there it stood, in all its striking glory. I know, art is totally subjective. Truth be told, I have nothing this solely graphic hanging on the walls of my home, but this one just spoke to me. This puzzle is a real test of patience. Scouts honor, be prepared.

My grades: Quality B+, Fun factor A-



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