Zen Art & Design

With our hand designed, wooden jigsaw puzzle product lines, our mission is to make unique, inspiring, heirloom quality, artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles at affordable, mainstream prices using eco-friendly materials. From raw materials to retail packaging and beyond, we strive to be pioneers in eco-friendly craftsmanship and artistic creativity while pricing our puzzles at competitive prices. Figural pieces, known as whimsical pieces (or “Whimsies”) in England, are one of the major features that differentiate the premium, wooden jigsaw puzzle from the die-cut, cardboard puzzle. They were included in wooden puzzles cut in the early 1900’s and throughout the 20th century, but we take them to another level–a level no one but the insatiably curious would ever perceive unless we blog about it. For instance, the Clown Fish is immune to the poison of the anemone in which it lives; in determining the figural pieces for our Chocolate Clownfish Zen and Peapod Puzzles, we based our research for the figural pieces on that fact, and, after some rather specific and lengthy research, we decided the figural pieces for the puzzle would all be fish that were also immune to the poison of the anemone. We contribute a portion of profits from Zen Puzzles™ to benefit environmental causes, and a portion of profits from Peapod Puzzles™ to benefit children's health programs, but, perhaps more importantly, an inspiring part of our mission (for us, at least) is to collaborate with non-profits and environmental causes through creating special edition puzzles and other products dedicated to fundraising for those causes. We’ve also worked hard to make our products and their packaging as eco-friendly as possible and to use raw goods made entirely in the USA, and are proud that our Zen Puzzles are eco-friendly and made entirely in the USA!