naar Nederlandse versie

The colour of the paper around the lid of the boxes were the indication of the size of the pieces, and whether they were single or double sided (these had images on both sides, to make them harder to complete).
(see the legend on the right)

To make the story complete: you can also see the serial numbers: red was 4, later changed to 1, the nn stands for the number of the series, p.e. '05' for the series fairytales with 8 (2x4) pieces and '10' is for the series children's puzzles with the same size. The shepherd with herd and dog, bottom of this page, is from the serie '75'.

 COLOUR
 ----------
 RED
 ORANGE
 GREEN
 BLUE
 YELLOW
 PURPLE
SIZE
--------------
large pieces
large pieces
middle sized
middle sized
small pieces
small pieces
single/double
-------------

single sided
double sided
single sided
double sided
single sided
double sided
  No old
--------
    4nn
5nn
6nn
7nn
16nn
  17nn
No new
------
    1nn
     2nn
3nn
  4nn
5nn
6nn



Also a catalogue was published. The 36 pages can here be viewed.

Most of the photo's of puzzles on this site were made by our sister Meta. She started collecting (second hand) Kolibri puzzles years ago. She now owns a respectable number of those puzzles, mostly bought on funfairs and jumble sales. The two KLM puzzles below (flightplan KLM (4 puzzels) and interior of a Fokker F.IX) are in my possession.

Apart from toy puzzles for shops, a considerable number of promotional puzzles were made for companies such as the KLM, Dutch Railways (NS), Rotterdamsche Lloyd, Transport company 'de Vlietjonge', Stork Machine factories, the Bijenkorf warehouses and many more. Unfortunately, most of these puzzles have, to the best of our knowledge, not been kept. Exclusive examples, like the puzzles made for the Royal Family of England, were (almost) unique pieces and cannot be found anywhere.
Lots of puzzles were exported, specifically large numbers to Belgium.


  


Luxury K-puzzles were sold in so called book boxes. See photograph above.

unexpected surprise
Unique "Bijenkorf" puzzle discovered

On December 6th 2009 Victor received an e-mail from Geert Bekkering with 2 photo's attached. Geert (from the Dutch "Puzzle Guild") obtained this puzzle somewhere and wondered wether this was indeed a "Klaus-puzzle" or not, because the style of sawing as well as the artwork was not completely "Kolibri-style".

Our sister Marianne was clever enough to forward this question to our uncle Hans, my father's last remaining (youngest) brother (he died in 2017 on April 26th) and very much in the know where Kolibri and K-Puzzle materials are concerned.
What follows here is Hans Klaus' reply:

Surely this is a Klaus-puzzle. And especially one from the early second world-war period. The lay-out of the box is already proof of this. Printing of the label was done by Van Wijland from Laren (North Holland). This is an English scenery from the old Harrison-collection, of which ample supply was still in stock.
The "massive" wooden material is also in accordance to early wartime standards, since plywood was no longer available. My father (your grandfather) searched for an alternative and tried to find this in what we call veneer. My father was very familiar with this kind of material, from his work as representative of Halbertsma - Grouw (Friesland), dealer of cigar- and cookie boxes. Since thoses boxes were never transported through the factory in Bussum but delivered directly to customers, I never saw these in my youth.
At the time, I always wondered about this material, as veneer is usually very thin, since it is used for veneering other types of wood. My father (your grandfather) elaborately explained this. He was also the one keeping al this types of innovations under his control. As boy of just about ten years old I was usually very interested in all the innovations engineered by him.

Standard K-Puzzles are made from plywood which is a very vulnerable material(you will centainly remember the numerous repairs to broken tongues). These veneer puzzles are even more troublesome and clearly needed a different kind of approach. The standard shape included enough curves to hold the puzzle together. A compromise to this was made, also because the veneer wood was slightly warped. Against better judgement, the sawing style was altered and puzzles were sent to the shops. In those days it was not difficult to sell whatever you wanted. The demand was far greater than the supply. From that point of view the sellingprice of a a staggering 1,95 was not strange. The puzzles that were directly sold a few years later to "Den Uyl" in the Nassaulaan (a toy shop) took approximately the same price. The problem of the breaking tongues were solved with a temporary trade-off by sawing these messy puzzles. Without tongues. Your father was a specialist in this kind of innovations.
After a short while production of these veneer puzzles were stopped, due to several reasons, but mainly because my father's quality-standard was too high to go on in this way. Therefore, these veneer puzzles have become extremely rare. After stopping with veneer softboard was tried (hardboard was to expensive).
Small wonder therefore that this Bijenkorf puzzle was not immediately recognized as a Klaus-Puzzle (then called “K-Puzzle”, although this one was called “Bijenkorf Puzzle”). By the way, the English word Puzzle was used, not the Dutch equivalent "Puzzel", since the first idea in 1932 came from an English magazine called “Hobbies“, and my father obviously had a subscription to this. This magazine was published by the makers of our first sawing machines, at that time still operated by foot. Later on, my father bought quite a few of those machines.
By the way, how nice it must be to have a puzzle-expert in your back-pocket. And none less than the chairman of the Dutch Puzzle-Guild! Looks like an interesting man, I would like to meet one day.



K-Puzzle for the KLM. 4 puzzles together make the KLM flight-plan in those days, with Fokker F.XXXVI
The Fokker F XXXVI can be found on another puzzle, the blue one below the puzzle of the F.IX interior.
(for WINDOWS only!)
K-Puzzle for the KLM. Black and white picture of a Fokker F.IX.

 

 

 

Scan from the book STUKJE VOOR STUKJE (Piece by Piece).
The original puzzle was in colour, Dutch (diesel)trains were made in Blue, with red bands below and above the cabin, and a white roof (the so-called Blue Angel).

Tangram game for the ships of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd

Red Cross hospital ship Henry Dunant                      The 'Golden Arrow' (1946-1967 in service in GB)
   
 

to continue: CHILDREN's PUZZLES