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.

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.

Gibsons puzzles are developing an ever expanding range of Christmas puzzles in their catalogue. The themes are of the old fashioned variety sometimes dating back to the Victorian era. The winter season with all its activities such as skating and snowman building as well as Christmas shopping are all included. Gibsons have also been increasing their selection of extra large jigsaw puzzles with the primarily English Christmas season as the main theme. This will allow both grandparents and grand children together to assemble the brightly colored and easily identifiable puzzle pieces on the kichen table over the winter holiday period.