"Red Window White Wall" - from Hogan's Harbor

"Red Window White Wall," Hogan's Harbor, 672 pieces, 18 x 24.5 inches

Hogan's Harbor, a Florida Art Gallery featuring the photography of Jim Hogan, has relatively recently entered the jigsaw puzzle market and as of this moment has four puzzles for sale. "Red Window White Wall," shown above, is one of the four, so this is, of course, my first experience with the company's product.

Of the four puzzles available, this is the one that immediately drew my eyes to it. I really like the composition of the photo and the way the bright red window contrasts so perfectly with the whites, blues, and greens surrounding it. I do have to admit that the puzzle itself turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I had anticipated - even though I was a bit wary of all that foliage to the left of the picture from the start and saved that section of the puzzle for last. If you like a challenging puzzle with fewer than 1000 pieces, this is one that you are likely to enjoy.

As usual, I started with the frame of the puzzle, and as usual, I missed a few pieces of the frame on the first sort or two that I made. By this point, though, the frame was almost complete, and I had made a good start on the red window itself and had placed a few pieces of the surface at the base of the wall. It's hard to resist going immediately to the bright red pieces because they stand out so clearly in the box of pieces. I'm willing to bet that just about everyone building this one will, in fact, do the window first.

As you can see, I continued to work on every color except the green of the leaves, but the time was coming soon that green leaves would be all that was left in the box. By this point, too, the main visual features of the photo are all near-complete, and the image is really starting to come together.

And now it was time for the leaves, the real challenge of "Red Window White Wall." I'm not quick when it comes to large sections of what appear to the eye to be almost identical pieces, but the good news is that the puzzle pieces themselves have enough shape variation that the leaves can be worked based on piece-shape fairly quickly. And I love the finished product. 

This one was fun.

Hogan's Harbor produces a quality puzzle, no doubt about that. The image is sharply reproduced - as can be seen in the texture variations of the white wall - and the colors are very realistic, unlike the orange or purple tinted images we see on too many jigsaw puzzles these days. The pieces themselves are of average thickness and weight, and they click into place very cleanly and solidly.

But as I experienced with two pieces, that does not always mean that the puzzle piece is in the right spot, so there are at least two sets of identically-shaped puzzled pieces in the box - probably more (but I got lucky and placed those correctly the first time around and didn't notice them). Luckily, there was enough color variation on the identical pieces that it was obvious that, despite the clean fit, the pieces were in the wrong spot.

This was the trickiest pair of the two I noticed, but even these had enough color difference that I suspected something was wrong right away and started searching for another piece for the spot.

"Red Window White Wall" fits together rather loosely, something akin to the fit of the wooden jigsaw puzzles I've built. I attribute the loose fit to the extremely clean cut of the pieces, an attribute that makes for a nice "click" when a piece is placed correctly but also (because the smooth cut has no "drag") makes it easy for the pieces to separate when the puzzle is jostled.  The problem, of course, ceases to exist as more and more pieces are locked into supporting positions, but until that point the looser fit can be a bit frustrating.

Bottom Line: Hogan's Harbor puzzles are a nice addition to what's out there for puzzlers to choose from, especially if the company's future images are of a style similar to "Red Windows White Wall." Personally, I prefer a tighter fit to the pieces, but the overall quality of this finished puzzle makes that something easy enough for me to forgive.

("Red Windows White Wall" was provided by Hogan's Harbor to Puzzle Fanatics for review purposes.}