Mike Jupp (b.1948) studied at the West Sussex College of Art and Design gaining a degree in Art and Animation, plus diplomas in Art and Advertising Design. Mike started his career in London working for an American design and marketing company. Later he freelanced as a copywriter, illustrator and cartoonist before traveling abroad. He traveled to the Netherlands before going on to California to work on two cartoon film series. Mike then worked in South Korea before returning to San Francisco and then back home to England in 1986. Mike has been Gibsons most widely sought puzzle designer and has seven different jigsaws in the Gibsons catalog. Mike’s style is quite different from the Gibsons more traditional puzzle but still has all the qualities associated with a decidedly english point of view. Mike’s “Where’s Waldo” look puzzles are jam packed with characters, creatures, settings and events based on themes as varied as “I Love Boats” to “I Love Car Boot Sales”. Mike usually, although certainly not always, has a new puzzle ready for the Gibsons puzzle catalog once a year. This year’s addition is entitled “I Love Great Britain”.

Gale Pitt has been a freelance artist since the Seventies. She has sold her originals and licensed her pictures of a wide variety of subjects to companies in the USA, Europe and the antipodes. She has been particularly successful in her work for decorative tin boxes and jigsaw puzzles. From her home in London, she has travelled to forty different coutries, gathering materials for her work and promoting it at International Trade Fairs. Gale paints pictures of ballooning, beaches, flight, fantasy, doll houses, gardens, cats and dogs, and any thing or creature requested. She has several jigsaw puzzles in the Gibsons catalog and because of the brightly colored subject matter has many 500 extra large piece jigsaw puzzles in the Gibsons catalog as well as a number of 1000 piece regular piece jigsaws. New for 2008 is the 500 extra large piece Victorian Dolls House puzzle which displays the interior of a Victorian era doll’s house. The puzzle has a true English Christmas atmosphere and will thoroughly enchant those who associate Christmas with the literature of Charles Dickens.

Terry Harrison was born near Wendover into an RAF family and consequently spent his early years moving from base to base, eventually settling in Farnborough, Hampshire. During his leisure time, Terry pursued his true passion which was landscape painting and by 1984 the demand on his original work was so great that he decided to paint full time and has never looked back! The increasing popularity of Terry’s work in both their original and printed formats (including cardboard jigsaw puzzles) is reflected in the ever increasing demand for his pictures both at home and abroad.His work can be found in collections around the world in Europe, Japan and the United States.Terry currently has fourteeen puzzles in the Gibsons catalog; his most popular pictures are 1000 piece puzzles of small seaside harbors that were once thriving fishing villages, canals decorated with barges and quaint english villages all embracing the nostalgia of a bygone era.

The Gibsons Game company is almost 100 years old. Despite not developing a puzzle line until fairly recently the company has created a range of puzzles with a decidedly English perspective through a span of time dating back to the early twentieth century and, especially for the Christmas season, even earlier into the Victorian era. Other European puzzle manufacturers compete from an increasingly weary range of stock photographs of castles, mountain lakes and air brushed galloping horses. Gibsons use only painted images which enhance the more homemade feel of the puzzles. Less dramatic but more humanly sympathetic, Gibsons puzzles appeal to the hobbyist who has an interest in the interaction of working people and the goings-on of everyday social activities through decades of seasonal occupations from spring to winter.