A Bad Dream

Margaret Richardson, a/k/a Mrs. Hayden Richardson, made many wonderful traditional puzzles in New York between 1908 and 1910, but also this extraordinary puzzle, designed and hand illustrated so that everyone of its 90 pieces resembles an animal, many of them highly imaginary (exception: hunter(?) in middle) without any spaces.  Non-interlocking, plywood, cut along the outlines of the strange creatures one might see in "A Bad Dream".  The first known example of a "cluster puzzle" based on the true tessellation principle without any gaps or overlaps, a type of puzzle not seen again until the 1930's.