Welcome to the OnlyJigsaw website. We hope you will come to love this puzzle which has been sweeping the world for many years.

History of the Jigsaw puzzle

The origins of jigsaw puzzles go back to the 1760s when European mapmakers pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces. The "dissected map" has been a successful educational toy ever since.

The puzzles of those days were quite a challenge. Most had pieces cut exactly on the color lines. There were no transition pieces with two colors to signal, for example, that the brown area (roof) fit next to the blues (sky). A sneeze or a careless move could undo an evening's work because the pieces did not interlock. And, unlike children's puzzles, the adult puzzles had no guide picture on the box; if the title was vague or misleading, the true subject could remain a mystery until the last pieces were fitted into place.

As the true addicts of wood puzzles began to suffer withdrawal symptoms, Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbetts saw an opportunity to fill the void. They founded Stave Puzzles, and within a few years had succeeded Par as the leader in wood puzzles. Indeed, Stave went several steps beyond Par, by commissioning original artwork that was specially designed to interact with the cutting patterns. Experimentation with pop-up figure pieces led to three-dimensional puzzles such as a free-standing carousel. Over the years Richardson invented many trick puzzles that fit together in several different wrong ways, but with only one correct solution. Stave emphasizes personalized puzzles and service, even remembering its customers' birthdays.