Kinstler Puzzles offers a huge variety of puzzles, many featuring works from local artists — like “Bodega Cat,” by artist Simone Johnson.
Photo courtesy of Kinstler Puzzles
Fed up searching stores for compelling fine art puzzles, Brooklynite and jigsaw enthusiast Rami Metal took it upon himself to find the missing piece on the market — Kinstler Puzzles.
Now in its second year of business, the Brooklyn-based company features the art of emerging and established contemporary artists whose pieces are on display at art galleries across the country.
Metal said that when searching for his next jigsaw puzzle to complete, he found his options were mainly limited to a few big-name artists who were from another era.
“I thought about what it would be like to start my own company and to bring the kind of puzzles that I want to do into the world and that’s where the genesis of Kinstler came from,” Metal told Brooklyn Paper.
He first came up with the business idea in 2019 — but it was held up by the Covid-19 pandemic, and missed the the initial wave of sales in puzzles and games that skyrocketed during the pandemic.
“The pandemic provided an interesting boost to the puzzle world, but my goal was to create something that isn’t riding that wave,” he said.
Metal officially launching Kinstler — Yiddish for artist — in August 2021, after extensive research into the contemporary art scene.
“I wasn’t from the art world so it took some time to figure out what I liked and what my tastes were,” he said. “I found some amazing artists that I thought would also make for great puzzles and, and thought that this makes sense as a company.”
Two years in and several puzzle drops later, Kinstler’s catalogue ranges from a quintessentially New York jigsaw — the 1,000 piece “Bodega Cat” puzzle by Simone Johnson — to the faces hidden among the chaos of artist Rachel Hayden’s 500-piece puzzle “Self Portrait as a…
Read the full article here
