The Singh Twins Jigsaw Puzzle, 750 piece

Jigsaw assembled size: 506 x 520 cm

750 piece puzzle

About the artwork:

Fuel for The Empire (from Botanical Tales and Seeds of Empires) explores the commercialisation of nature that helped fuel the British Empire and highlights Kew's role in this endeavour.
Four plants are highlighted in star-shaped frames. Palm oil, which provided lubrication for machinery and railways was an important element of tin can, soap and arms manufacturing, Rubber, cultivated on British plantations, was used in a multitude of manufactured goods. Timber, in shipbuilding enabled the transport of goods, plants and people across the globe. Rice, an important food crop in India, but British agricultural policy favoured cash crops such as Indigo, opium and tea.

Four vignettes highlight more. Breadfruit, identified as a food crop for enslaved workers. Grapevines, carried to Australia, with a host of other useful plants on board the flagship of the First Fleet. Maize, a staple food that the indigenous people of the East Coast of America taught Europeans how to cultivate. Citrus fruits helped sailors safeguard themselves against scurvy and later became a key export from plantations in the Caribbean and Africa. In between are more commodities: opium, rum, sugar, tea, coffee and cocoa. In a kaleidoscopic pattern radiating from the centre: cotton, mulberry, arjun, castor oil, prickly pear, flax, bananas and rice imply complex narratives around exploitation and colonisation. An image of a commemorative plate celebrating Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee In 1887 highlights the vast income gained through trade from and between British colonies.