An old collector friend of mine recently got in touch with me to find out how I was doing with the cross country move, and to see if there's anything that he can do to help me along the way. He ended up gifting me back some puzzles of mine that he's had in his collection these past 20 years, instructing me to sell them and use the money to keep pushing forward with my moving plans. Such a sweet gesture! The story behind these puzzles is that back in 2005 I had the idea to try selling my work through an art gallery, and so arranged a hometown solo show at the Pacific Grove Art Center which I called "Pursuits of Perfection". I spent the better part of a full year fabricating over 100 copies of various Stewart Coffin style puzzles for the purpose of displaying them behind glass in an attempt to market my work to art collectors in general, rather than puzzle collectors per se. Over the course of this project, I took my craftsmanship to a whole new level of perfectionism by developing a new fabrication technique which uses CNC drilled holes and friction fit steel dowel pins in order to join the individual blocks of wood together rather than glue. The whole thing was a big experiment, and in the end I came to a few conclusions:

• The pin technique is great, but I should have used glue in addition to the steel pins.
• No other sales agent will ever be as good as I am at explaining / demonstrating how these puzzles work.
• The "fine art" industry is kind of a scam.
• All of the extra effort that went into the show itself (above and beyond simply fabricating the puzzles) was not worth it in the long run, aside from an ego boost.
• I could have boosted my ego with just one puzzle behind glass, rather than 100 of them.

At the end of it all, the gallery sold one or two of my least expensive pieces, and then I promptly sold all of the rest of them as a single lot to the patron who helped me finance the project. There were naturally some puzzles in this group that turned out better than others, yet they all hold a special place in my heart because of the time and attention to detail that went into the whole project. In many cases, these puzzles were the finest examples of my craftsmanship of certain designs, several of which I have never reproduced since.

As to be expected, these puzzles have "aged" over the course of the 19 years which have gone by since I first made them, yet their condition is still overall quite excellent aside from that the vibrancy of some of the wood grain colors has faded with time. I've refurbished them all prior to listing them for sale here, which means specifically that I've pulled apart the pin joints and added glue in order to address that lesson I learned along the way. I've been somewhat selective about which pin joints I've serviced in this regard, making the decision on a case by case basis as needed. I've put notes in each listing about what degree of refurbishment work I've done.

In addition to coming up with the pin technique over the course of working on this project back in 2005, I also decided that I wanted to stop signing my work with pen/ink because I did not like the way that it looks. I felt like I would be "defacing" the puzzle piece with blurry handwritten pen-strokes, and so none of the puzzles in the Pursuits of Perfection edition are signed or marked in any way. In the years following, I experimented with laser engraving the puzzle pieces instead, but eventually settled on providing separate certificates of authenticity with each puzzle so that I could still physically sign something without compromising the perfection of the puzzle itself.

Part of the refurbishment process includes that I've made new certificates of authenticity for each of these puzzles that I'm selling here.