Showing posts with label Mucha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mucha. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

New Puzzle Day! Les Quatre moments de la journée (The four times of day)

Beautiful pieces of the Jeux Nathan puzzle
Les Quatre moments de la journée 

(The four times of day)  - A. Mucha
It's new puzzle day! The first of our big boy shopping spree puzzles has shown up and unlike the Tower of Babel, it was extremely well packaged! M said since it's going to take 18 years to complete the big boy list, she said the puzzles feel are like our children; somedays she loves them, others, she wants to send them to boarding school!

Anyhow, todays arrival is Mucha's Les Quatre moments de la Journée (The four times of day) - 6000pc from Paris based Nathan puzzles. It is our first 6000 piece puzzle and our first puzzle from Nathan. The pieces feel fantastic and have a  non interlocking edges with scalloped and divotted edges. They seem to fit tightly together and be well glued and flat but nothing like an older springbox puzzle (those are insanely tight). The knobs of the puzzle are more round than Ravensburger and should offer a nice change of pace.

Alphonse Mucha was an influential Czech artists in the late 1800's early 1900's with his distinct style 'le style Mucha' becoming synonymous with the style 'Art Nouveau'.

Mucha is considered the father of the current day art poster. He felt everyone's life could be imporved by art and he created a series of mass produced art panels including: The Seasons (1896), The Flowers (1898), The Arts (1898), The Times of the Day (1899), The Precious Stones (1900) and The Moon and the Stars (1902). Mucha said of his series, "I was happy to be involved in an art for the people and not for private drawing rooms. It was inexpensive, accessible to the general public, and it found a home in poor families as well as in more affluent circles."

Mucha went on later to complete his "life's work" the Slav Epic, A series of 20 enormous paintings depicting the life and struggle of the Slavic people. Some of these paintings were up to 26ft long by 20 feet tall and they all are an extraordinary work.

Les Quatre moments de la journée (The four times of day)  - A. Mucha by Jeux Nathan Puzzles (Paris France)

The box is not in perfect shape but I dont buy a puzzle for the box.

Fantastic fitting piece and nice departure from the standard of today where each side of rectangular piece has a knob or receptacle. (Shown top center piece with two receptacles and two scalloped edges. Top left shows a divotted piece and several scalloped pieces are shown throughout). In the lower left, you can see how nicely the pieces fit together.

Links

The Mucha Foundation: http://www.muchafoundation.org/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Mucha
Slave Epic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slav_Epic
Wiki Paintings: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/alphonse-mucha