Here is a little
history of puzzle cutter Nancy Ballhagen, aka Granny Nanny.
Nancy was born in
Fort Collins, Colorado, but moved with her parents to California
at age 2. The family lived in Los Angeles and Nancy spent all
of her school years there. She met and married her husband of
48 years while in high school. They moved to the San Gabriel Valley,
of California, and spent the next 29 years there raising their
family of 2 boys. Nancy and Keith started their own retail business
in 1968 and in 1970 went into the wood working business making
shadow boxes and decopage boards for the craft trade. From there
they branched out into the Miniature field where Keith started
a line of miniature store buildings and Nancy helped and did finishing
work on them for samples to show off Keith's buildings and the
other miniature items they crafted.
Their customers were mostly shops, and a distributer in Ohio and
one in England. They also did miniature shows all over the US
for several years. Eventually they decided they wanted a simpler
life. So in 1989 they sold their home and moved the business to
the Missouri Ozarks, where their two sons eventually followed.
Having been interested
in puzzles for many years, and noticeing the lack of choices in
most stores, Nancy and Keith soon decided to open their own Jigsaw
Puzzle store on the 13 acres where their home is located and where
Keith's woodshop was.
So in 1991 Keith and Nancy opened their own puzzle store in a
forty foot mobil home they bought and remodeled. The store was
housed in the mobil for about 4 years. The Ballhagen's finally
decided they needed more room, so in 1995 a new puzzle store was
built. About this time their younger son Richard moved to Missouri.
Keith, always being an avid woodworker tried cutting some wood
puzzles for the fun of it and showed son Richard the process and
he was hooked and has since started his own Jigsaw puzzle cutting
puzzle business.
Nancy watched both
her husband and son, and decided this looked fun and interesting
and asked to be shown the basics of the scroll saw. From the very
first one, she was hooked on making wooden jigsaw puzzles. She
started out on a very old, small scroll saw and was soon looking
for something newer and better. When she and son Richard attended
a puzzle convention near Boston, she met a lady who had a "old
but in good condition Delta scroll saw" for sale. An appointment
was made and Nancy and Richard took a side trip to Lewiston, Maine
and purchased the saw which is a 1946 commercial Delta scroll
saw, definitely better if not newer. As of December 2003 Nancy
has retired the old Delta saw which served her well for several
years. She received a Hawk 226 scroll saw from her husband for
Christmas, and is now using it to cut her unique puzzles.
The puzzles shown
on this web page are some of the unique hand cut wooden jigsaw
puzzles Nancy makes. Most are cut from 1/4 inch Italian Poplar
plywood or 1/8 inch birch plywood. The description will tell which
is used. A very fine almost "hair thin" .008 blade is
used to cut the very unique puzzles you will see here. Nancy cuts
in a free hand style called "random" as there is no
set pattern, and some of the pieces are pretty oddley shaped.
Most of her puzzles contain "figure" pieces which are
cut from a pattern, and usually represent the theme of the puzzle,
eg. a cat shaped puzzle would have cat figure pieces, and so on.
Her puzzles are signed "GRANNY NANNY" and the date,
on the piece called a signature piece, which is a "granny
sunbonnet" No two puzzles are ever alike even if the same
picture or same shape is used. She does not do custom made puzzles.
An added note: Nancy's husband
Keith passed away in October of 2007.
So as she was cutting her puzzles in her spare time, were fewer
cut for a while as she has to take care of the Jigsaw Puzzle store
and internet business alone now and will not have as much time
to cut puzzles. She hopes to be able to get more cutting done
in 2008 when the routine gets back to normal.
It is now mid 2008
and Nancy is again cutting puzzles, still in her spare time but
the store routine pretty much back to normal and so she is making
up for lost time. You will see several new puzzles cut in 2008,
including the two of Ha Ha Tonka castle and water tower, which
is located about 40 miles from Nancy's place in the Missouri Ozarks,
there is quite a history there and you can find it on the net
just type in HA HA Tonka and you will get several sites, the best
one being the missouri state one, there is a short story of the
castle included in both puzzles.
The Bluegrass puzzle on the Sillhoutte page is something that
tickled her fancy, she is learning the guitar and son Richard
plays the bass and fiddle. Nancy designed the pattern. Return to Home Page