“In today’s distraction-filled digital world, the simple act of gathering round a jigsaw feels even more special and important,” says Rachael Hattam, one half of the brother-sister pair behind Bermondsey’s Original Jigsaw Co.
With sibling James, the two run their jigsaw company from Bermondsey, dispatching orders and creating new illustrations.
It started back in 2020 when they created a jigsaw to summarise “the crazy year we’d all experienced at the height of the pandemic”, explains Rachael. It sold out in less than a month, so they did it again with a jigsaw to commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II.
The success they’d experienced allowed them to launch Original Jigsaw Co and create jigsaws year-round.
Rachael says: “We really love that jigsaws are a simple way to slow down from the busyness of life and enjoy passing the time together. We did a lot of puzzles growing up and formed treasured memories with our family, spending slow afternoons gradually piecing bits of sea and sky together, whiling away hours and chatting as we go.”
And now, working together as brother and sister has brought them even closer: “We’ve always been a tight-knit family (our parents also run a business together up in Sheffield), but the highs and lows unique to running a business have definitely strengthened our sibling bond.
“We like to work very collaboratively as well, since our skill sets are so different, which means we spend a lot of time together!”
When it comes to making the jigsaws, Rachael says it’s a very long process. But they take “great pride and pleasure” in the creative development.
“It’s important to us that we spend lots of time mulling it over and trying lots of ideas out,” she explains. They brainstorm, link together a scene, and then move to sketch – for which they create “an enormous mood board of reference imagery for absolutely everything in the jigsaw”.
Rachael then works from this mood board to draw the scene piece by piece, which takes around 150 hours of illustrating and iterating before it’s ready for print.
She says that, although they haven’t released a Bermondsey-specific jigsaw yet, they do have Easter eggs dotted throughout their puzzles. In one, “you can see two people enjoying a beer together outside an arch that looks suspiciously like the Bermondsey Beer mile…”
“Both James and I love Bermondsey – it feels like home in what is otherwise a huge and overwhelming city. There is such a richness of community here, which makes it easy to put down roots,” Rachael told us.
“Interestingly, the longer we’ve lived here, the more we’ve become aware of connections with the area. Our grandparents are both from south east London, and have historic connections to Drummond Road Baptist church, now City Hope, an amazing church community based on the same site.
“And we recently learned that our great aunt used to work in the Peek Freans factory, now the Biscuit Factory, where our new offices are based.” The Biscuit neighbours!
And finally, what local recs does Rachael have? She says the Arch Climbing Wall is her happy place: “The people are lovely, the wall is in great condition, and the coffee’s pretty good, too! Definitely worth checking out, even if you’re not into bouldering.”
Plus, “our friends at MALT often put on live music events in their super cool arch on Maltby Street” and not forgetting coffee – “NoNo Coffee opposite Bermondsey station is a stop-and-go situation (there’s no seating), but it’s the perfect place to pick up a delicious coffee en route to the river. They also do an epic date slice…”
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