Richard McGuire
Puzzlehead
Brooklyn, USA: Areaware, 2014
19 x 17.5 x 2.5 cm.
Edition size unknown
The artist’s first toy is a woodblock puzzle of minimalist cartoon faces, first produced in 1990 and reissued by Areware in 2014. The reissue is now itself out of print, but can be found on Ebay for between sixty and seventy dollars. The original is very scarce.
Below are images of the prototype, the original edition, and a preparatory sketch, both from the book Richard McGuire: Then and There, Here and Now, by Vincent Tuset-Anrès and Anette Gehrig.
"Puzzlehead started as a phone doodle made on graph paper and then I made a prototype. I had the good fortune of meeting Steven Guarnaccia (now the head of Parsons illustration program). He was putting together a book project of 'artists who make toys'. We traded work.
A toy designer named Byron Glaser saw the prototype at Steven's studio and called me up. Within a few months I was in Indonesia working with a team who were manufacturing my product. Byron and his partner Sandra Higashi had altready created Zolo, a hand made wooden construction toy that was distributed by MoMA. in the late 80's. They were looking for other products to keep the team working that they had put together."
- Richard McGuire, speaking with Greg Allen
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