Finding the secrets to mindfulness one puzzle piece at a time

We recently spoke to Balance Media about Piece and Quiet, and what our mission is through the medium of artistic jigsaw puzzles!

Check out the full article here.

What was your inspiration for starting Piece and Quiet?

We launched the company after rediscovering an old passion for jigsaw puzzles during lockdown. We’d both done lots of jigsaw puzzles as children, but found that over the years, with our busy working lives, we struggled to find the time to fit them in. As lockdown began, we found ourselves spending more and more time on our phones and in front of the TV screen. Then we started doing jigsaw puzzles again and found that it was one of the few things we’d do where we’d put our phone away and properly switch off from the world. The jigsaw puzzles provided a great distraction after work and really helped us relax during a time when the world was surrounded in so much uncertainty.

And it just grew from there?

Yes. Saturday mornings with a nice coffee and jigsaw puzzle became a regular feature, but we quickly got bored of the traditional jigsaw puzzle designs of landscapes and the countryside. This gave us the idea for Piece and Quiet, to bring fun, striking and modern art to the jigsaw puzzle format. We began our search on Instagram and discovered an amazing illustrator called Sophie Charnley, an illustrator based just round the corner from us in London. We absolutely loved her bold and energetic style and were so pleased when she came on board to design our debut artistic jigsaw puzzle collection.

You describe your puzzles as promoting Mindful Creativity?

Our artistic jigsaw puzzles aim to promote the same mindfulness we found in completing them ourselves. People often think of mindfulness as just meditation, but we recognise it as being fully present in what you are doing, your thoughts and how you are feeling. Completing a jigsaw puzzle really allowed us to slow down, relax and be mindful in a way that we’d previously struggled to be able to do. It made us put our phones down, forget about working life and really focus on taking a moment for ourselves.

And you see completing your puzzles as a creative act?

We all want to feel creative, but it can be difficult to find a creative outlet starting from a blank canvas. Jigsaw puzzles provide a platform to be creative within a structured way and what better way to be creative than piecing together a stunning piece of art. There’s also a sense of accomplishment that comes with putting the last piece in – it’s rare to find a creative activity that is rounded off so perfectly. This creative process, partnered with the mindfulness benefits of puzzles is what we call Mindful Creativity.

You really promote and showcase the talent of the artists you use…

We want to use Piece and Quiet as a platform for talented local artists to reach new audiences in new ways. We give our artists a share of each sale and include an ‘artist in the spotlight’ with the puzzle which contains an insight into the artist and the story behind the jigsaw puzzle. We champion the art across our website and social media, aiming to bring new customers to purchase other work from our artists. We’ve recently been working on a really exciting partnership with an awesome brand who reached out to us after seeing Sophie’s art. They loved it so much, they’ve commissioned her to work on a project for them too, which is amazing to hear and exactly what we’re aiming for in the concept. Given how hard the creative industries have been hit during the pandemic, we think it’s a more important message than ever to shout about.

Tell us about your debut collection of puzzles.

Our debut collection features ‘Indoor Jungle’, a plant lovers dream home, alongside ‘Lockdown Lowdown’ which is all about the many exciting things people were up to during lockdown – banana bread baking, yoga stretching, painting and the infamous zoom quizzes. The final artistic jigsaw puzzle is called ‘Nature of the City’ and reminisces coming together with friends and enjoying a summers night in the park in the City. We wanted to reinvent the puzzle from a design perspective, so our jigsaw puzzles come in a bright tube, with the pieces in a cute tote bag inside.

How have people responded?

We’ve had some amazing feedback, particularly from people discovering jigsaw puzzles for the first time and are really experiencing the mental health benefits that come from taking a moment for yourself. We hope that it inspires our customers to keep taking mindful moments, whether that’s with a puzzle, a book or whatever works for them. We want to build a community that shares their positive experiences and help others discover the different ways they’ve found to improve their mental health. We’ve found jigsaw puzzles to be our way of relaxing, but different things work for different people and we want to take people on the journey to finding a happier version of themselves.

Thanks again to Balance Media for taking the time to talk to us and hear more about Piece and Quiet and our amazing jigsaw puzzles.