As January 29 is National Puzzle Day, let’s take a look at an unusual jigsaw puzzle depicting the 1893 World’s Fair.
A jigsaw puzzle titled “The 1893 World’s Fair” from the Nice Card Company shows an impossible view of MacMonnies Fountain and the Agricultural Building.
Produced by the Nice Card Company, “The 1893 World’s Fair” is a 500-piece, 18-by-24-inch jigsaw puzzle. The assembled image is a photograph of the front part of MacMonnies Fountain on the west end of the Court of Honor. The view, however, is impossible … and it was just this problem that caused the image to catch my eye when I spotted the puzzle box on a low shelf of a downtown Chicago bookstore recently. The simple mistake made a sale.
The foreground of the photograph shows four (of the eight) riders on seahorses that formed the front part of Edward MacMonnies’ sculptural group, which pointed eastward into the Grand Basin. The problem is that the background, to the left, shows the Agricultural Building surmounted by Saint-Gaudens’ Diana. With the seahorses pointing east, the building in the northeast background should be the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. The image has been reversed.
The view of fromt of MacMonnies Fountain looking to the southeast, with the Agricuttural Building in the background. [Image from Buel, J. W. The Magic City, A Massive Portfolio of Original Photographic Views of the Great World’s Fair and Its Treasures of Art, Including a Vivid Representation of the Famous Midway Plaisance. Historical Publishing Company, 1894.]
The MacMonnies Fountain viewed looking to the northwest. [Image from Picturesque World’s Fair. W.B. Conkey, 1894; digitally edited.]
This sort of mistake crops up occasionally in digital archives, especially when the primary source is a glass slide that can be easily flipped. The jigsaw puzzle box from the Nice Card Company indicates that the source of their image is the Chicago History Museum, and the original photograph—with the correct orientation—can be found in the Museum’s online image collection (item ICHi-025384).
Although this jigsaw puzzle appears to be out-of-stock, the Nice Card Company continues to offer a selection of notecards ($2.95 each), framed cards ($32.00 each), and magnets ($3.95 each) that use photographs 1893 World’s Fair including the same (reversed) MacMonnies Fountain, the Administration Building, the Ferris Wheel, and the Observation Deck of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, the Field Columbian Museum, and views of the Court of Honor titled “Columbian Exposition” and “The White City.”
Jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts can find scores of other 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition products at the Fine Art America website. Or you can watch us assemble another World’s Fair jigsaw puzzle in our collection here.
Happy puzzling!
