The second ancestral puzzle was The Milkmaid, with about 250 pieces, and again no image to guide assembly, just intuition. The most obvious pieces to assemble among the three other main colors were this portion of a cow, and then some smaller cows in a field.

There were three main colors: grey-tan, greens, and reds, plus the milkmaid’s face. Her red skirts were the next easiest, while the faded tones of the sky and field were more challenging.

As I got further along in the puzzle, I could not find the milkmaid’s bodice, and I began to feel confused about how the large cow would fit into the perspective that was emerging. As with the previous Pastime puzzle, the cuts around figures and shapes, like the cows, the wooden buckets, clothing, and the rooster, made fitting the background pieces … puzzling. Especially since the thin film of color on a number of pieces was chipping away even as I gently handled them.

There was a quietly mesmerizing quality to this puzzle. These old wooden pieces have been softened with age and use and have an almost velvety texture. I’ve optimized the images to make the colors a little brighter, just for ease and interest of viewing.

Only once I got the shed put together (and there was no hint until it was together that it would be a shed) did I realize there was no way what I had thought was a cow was a cow… and suddenly realized it was the missing bodice of the milkmaid. It was a great example of how a preconceived notion can determine one’s reality: I simply could not see that it was the shoulder of the milkmaid once I had decided it was the back end of a cow. (But if it was, where was the tail? I didn’t let that detail deter me.)

Once that epiphany hit, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it sooner. It was almost exactly the same shoulder and bodice that was hanging on the blue wall in my mother’s portrait of Aunt Gretchen, from a photograph of her made in the same era as the puzzle. Assembling a puzzle with no image affords a series of one delightful surprise after another. I’m grateful for The Milkmaid.