Origianlly from Okinawa Japan,Yasutoshi Makishi has been a resident of Pennsylvania for over 21 years and supports his artistic puzzle-craft hobby with his career in high-end quality custom cabinets for elite homes. Inspired by a passion for parquet puzzle boxes from Hakone Japan, Makishi has produced unique 8, 13, 18 and 30 move puzzle box designs. His most challenging and recent puzzle is an astonishing 50-move puzzle box that took a full 3 years to design and build. Such exotic puzzle boxes can be seen exhibited in selective art and craft shows throughout the Eastern United States, and his passion for the future is to continue hand crafting such high quality wooden puzzle boxes in collectible limited editions.

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Ignited in his passion by a chance puzzle box discovery during a trip to Mexico, Matthew Dawson became enthralled by complex puzzle box design. As a collector and enthusiast, his presence has been felt behind the scenes for years, and his unusual and unorthodox concepts can be seen in the designs of many modern puzzle boxes today. For example, Matthew helped inspire the Stickman Snowflake Box, and although modified, the original concept behind the Stickman Illogical puzzle box is a brainchild of his. Now Matthew is doing more than sharing his unique concepts with modern puzzle artists, he is developing his own unique line of puzzle boxes. His first puzzle, the MakDaw #1 (Pagoda), has received acclaim from collectors in many countries, and now a remake of this ingenious design is available to the public as well. Matthew looks forward to staking his claim in the puzzle community with many of his other intriguing designs. He also hopes to present new puzzle boxes at future IPP exchanges. Matthew lives in the Houston, Tx area.