Ravensburger - Hillside Cottage 1000 Piece Puzzle

A stone cottage under a mountain, with a garden planted to bursting and a printed border that names every flower in it. Number 15 in Ravensburger's long-running Country Cottage Collection, and the border is the detail that makes it a better puzzle than it looks.

What you are looking at

A tile-hung stone cottage with a steep roof, two chimneys and three dormer windows picked out in white bargeboards. A white front door with black ironwork, climbing roses trained either side of it, hanging baskets under the eaves. In front, a cottage garden at full height: delphiniums and foxgloves at the back, phlox, dahlias and marigolds forward of them, and a mown lawn running to the bottom edge.

Around the whole picture runs a cream border with the flower names printed on it in a fine serif: Cornflower, Chrysanthemum, Marigold, Impatiens, Helenium, Petunia and Daisy across the top, Dahlia, Rose, Foxglove, Phlox and Leucanthemum down the left, Delphinium, Geranium and Allium down the right. There is a lot of wildlife hidden in it. A blue tit top left and a bullfinch top right, butterflies in the corners, a peacock on the roof ridge, doves in flight, a blackbird on the lawn and a pheasant in the bottom right. To the right of the cottage, two horses at a white gate, a lane, a church tower and the hills going up behind.

What it is like to build

Build the border first and the edge closes itself. Cream ground with dark lettering on it is the highest contrast anywhere in the picture, and it wraps all four sides. That is an unusually easy frame and it is worth taking before anything else.

Then the roof, and do not treat it as one thing. It is the largest single mass in the image and it is four different materials: grey slate near the ridge, warm brown tile lower down, moss along the valleys and white painted board on the dormers. Sort it into those bands rather than into "roof" and it stops being a wall of brown.

The flower beds are the long middle, and the rule is sort by flower, not by colour. A purple delphinium is a tall spike of small florets, a purple phlox is a flat round head. At piece scale those look nothing alike even though the colour swatch is identical. The lawn at the bottom is the only genuinely dull region and it is mercifully small.

Why Ravensburger for an illustration this dense

Made in Germany since 1891, and in a 1000 piece no two pieces share a shape. On an illustrated picture with this much repeated small detail, a nearly-right piece that refuses to seat is exactly the feedback you want. The linen-textured, low-glare laminate matters more than usual here too, because a picture with this many small bright colours is one you will be leaning over for hours.

Specifications

A little context

The English cottage garden is one of the most durable subjects in the category and it has survived every fashion that has come through it. What has changed is the border treatment: the named-flower frame is a recent habit and it is a genuine improvement, because it hands you an easy edge and a bit of information at the same time. If you want the same mood without the botanical labelling, Romantic Cottage is the closest thing we carry.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.