Koa Bow Tie Box

A couple of months ago I was given a rather stunning Kagen Sound Koa Bow Tie Box – actually, that’s not quite true – Kagen sort of threw it at my feet in front of my friends  - or maybe dropped it might be more accurate, either way, he picked it up and gave it to me, and I was very chuffed!

[Fret not dear reader, it was well swaddled in bubble wrap at the time, and there wasn’t an ounce of maleficence in the actions!]

Developed in parallel with his larger runs of Circle Maze Boxes, this was a short run made as gifts so they look a little different, and possibly behave a little differently – but the latter is hard to confirm as they haven’t been released into the wild yet. 

The obvious feature is a large metal disk in the centre of the box with an interesting maze cut into it… through the maze you can see a wooden peg that’s attached to the lid of the box and it seems that you’re going to need to manoeuvre through the maze…

A little fiddling shows that the maze can move backwards and forwards along the lid (where that little peg allows) and it can also spin around… cool, so clearly all we’re going to need to do is to manoeuvre the maze around the peg until the lid of the box comes off.

Turns out that it’s not quite that simple, though. Quite quickly you might in fact find yourself running out of options in the maze – with no apparent way out… get past that one and you find yourself somewhere else in the maze – again, with no apparent way around things.

It’s not a horribly complex puzzle, but it’s an absolute delight to play with, and solve… and when you have, it’s hard not to admire the little details in there, from the book-matched grain all the way around the sides of the box, to the ebonised walnut peg and rails that keep the metal maze from scuffing the beautifully finished curly maple lid.

It’s a beautiful object and I consider myself hugely lucky to have one of a tiny number of them out there…