A Conversation with Rose Guay

My first puzzle memory is doing cardboard puzzles when my grandparents would visit from out of state. I grew up in the small New England town of Harrison, Maine which is also known as part of the Lake Region area and a busy tourist attraction in the summer.

My family were not big puzzle fans and therefore, I did not do a lot of the cardboard puzzles growing up.  I was not at all familiar with wooden puzzles.I now occasionally play with wooden jigsaw puzzles in family situations that I have made for them.

I was working as an assistant to the Alumni Director at Bridgton Academy and was also selling my digitally enhanced photography on the side.  When the Academy was starting to downsize and my children were so very young, I decided to resign and became a stay at home Mom.  Once my children had become school age, I became bored.  At that time, my husband was working as manager of a store that was owned by Elizabeth Stuart [founder of Elms Puzzles] where she sold her hand cut wooden puzzles along with many other novelties.  She offered me a job as one of her puzzle cutters. 

At the time, I wasn’t particularly excited about it.  Once Betsy started teaching me, I started becoming addicted to the combination of wood, saw and it’s novelty.  Then I started detailing the whimsies and putting in designed edge pieces that did not look like an edge piece and also some line cutting.  The other cutters then started doing the same.  It was difficult since we were using old Delta saws at the time with only one speed and no foot pedal.  The ease of cutting came with the purchase of new Seyco saws.  We never used lasers.

Betsy then wanted me to create special borders for special customers.  I would design and draw them, they were painted and added to the print that I would cut.

I’ve cut so many puzzles since 1991, that I don’t remember my first puzzle and have no idea how many I’ve cut since that time to 2022.  The largest puzzle I cut in conjunction with the other cutters, was a large puzzle that was in the dimensions of a customer’s coffee table.  It would fit the coffee table and be put under glass.

I really like and only cut wooden interlocking medium sized pieces.  I have a fetish about wanting to pick a completed puzzle up and swinging it around to see if it would hold together.

Since my name is Rose, my special piece was a rose that I would include in all the puzzles I cut.  I started playing with that to make it more entertaining by having the flower portion inserted into another piece and the stem coming out of the piece.  A cat would have the rose in the stomach and the stem would be the tail, a china teapot would have the flower portion as a design inside it while the stem would be it’s handle, and so on.  In the early 2000’s, Betsy made me her Artistic Director.

When Betsy passed away in 2007 and her husband Fred Stuart became the owner, the place was at a loss on how effectively continue since no one had been effectively trained to do so.  I decided to give it a try since I had used at least one the apps she had used to produce and size the images to cut.  Learning other apps, one for producing the annual catalog and such, this took me more time to train myself.  Eventually I became capable to do Betsy’s job including printing, color correcting and sizing images, contracting new artists, producing the catalogs and aiding Fred whenever needed.  Fred still handled to what he was accustomed to, payroll, royalties, tax forms, etc.  Needless to say, I was no longer cutting.

I did appear on the Martha Stewart show to talk about our puzzles and how we cut them, displayed some whimsies and questions that Martha would ask.  Martha was pleasant, easygoing, very engaging and seemed genuinely interested. 

I went back to cutting when the company was sold and the new owners took over [and it became Waterford].  I was still cutting a variety of sizes and images but I was no longer drawing borders to place on top of that image.

Since sales seemed to be doing fairly well, the new owners decided to outsource another cutter from a different state.  I saw one of her puzzles with some irregular edges and partial borders on it digging into the image itself.  I was stunned.  It was beautiful and looked better and more natural than an added painted border.  My head said I CAN DO THIS!!!, not realizing that I was actually shouting it out loud. 

That puzzle was cut by Shay Carmichael and it inspired me to new levels of creativity.  Shay is a beautiful, imaginative and very fine cutter and I appreciate her creativity and inspiration.

Community News

I just got my tickets for the Puzzle Parley and hope to see you there. Janell of 3CatMax and I did a site visit in March for the next Puzzle Jam South in 2025 and we’ve been brainstorming lots of new ideas. Make sure you’ve signed up for the PJS email list to stay in the loop.

Available Puzzles

I came across a vintage chocolate ad recently and had to search out more because they’re just so great, especially for an admitted chocoholic such as myself. Seriously, the checkout lady asked me what I was planning to cook looking at the amount of chocolate I bought at the grocery today. Um, nothing. Just replenishing our stash. So expect to see more of these in the future. If you are interested in any of these, just send me a message. They are not listed on the website yet. Note that there are a few other puzzles ready to ship on the website.

Garden Corner

I haven’t killed anything!!! I also haven’t planted anything for spring, but that’s beside the point. It’s past time to plant basil for the year since we’re in the mid-80s now. Fortunately I still have a jar of basil I dried last summer.

We’ve spotted hummingbirds, 6 male indigo buntings and the rose breasted grosbeaks should be here any day.