Deborah Banyas and T. P. (Terry) Speer have been producing surrealistic art since the 1980s. Speer does the art and Banyas creates the sculptures. We have a lot of it in our home. From 1988 to 1994, Speer produced calendars with his artwork, one for each month. They are still fun to look through. I had two of them made into jigsaws by Stave in 1990. Back then a 200-piece puzzle was around $200. Today, a 200-piece puzzle from Stave is around $2,000. I won't be buying more.
Look at the cuts in this puzzles. All Stave puzzles are cut by hand with a scroll saw using a very thin blade. Most of the others I have posted are cut with a laser. Quality laser-cut jigsaws, like the ones from Liberty, are excellent, and more afforable, but thereis nothing like a quality hand-cut jigsaw.
I'm sure a lot of planning goes into how a lot of the cuts and silhouettes (Stave's name for whimsies) will be made. There are a lot of tricky cuts like false corners in the middle of the puzzle, other pieces that look like edges, and many cuts made along the borders of two colors. The third photo shows the assembled puzzle with the silhouettes removed.
This puzzle is from the October 1988 calendar. Could you have guessed is was October?