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1704East India Co's sales
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1704East India porcelain
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1709Queen's Royal Cookery
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1710Cabinet of curiosities
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1715Sugar in Britain
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1720Bartholomew Fair
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1721Gulliver's Travels
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1725Executions at Tyburn
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1730Textile production
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1730Cities in chaos
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1731East India textiles
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1733The Harlot’s Progress
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1741Handel's Messiah
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1742Advert for a giant
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1743Surgery
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1743Muffin Seller
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1744JS Bach manuscript
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1747The Art of Cookery
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1751Henry Fielding: Crime
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1751Gin addiction
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1755Johnson's Dictionary
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1761'The British Giant'
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1766Jigsaw Puzzle Map
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1770The Spinning Jenny
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1771Pleasure gardens
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1771Factories
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1773London prostitutes
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1775Captain Cook's journal
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1776Declaration of Independence
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1780Map of the Gordon Riots
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1780Storming of the Bastille
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1781Runaway slaves
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1784First curry powder advert
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1784First hot air balloon
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1787Abolitionist meeting notes
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1790Georgian Theatre
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1791Mozart’s notebook
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1791Poverty
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1791Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
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1792Mary Wollstonecraft
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1793Execution of Louis XVI
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1794William Blake's Notebook
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Intro
This map is a jigsaw puzzle, designed by John Spilsbury, formerly the apprentice to the Royal Geographer. Spilsbury is believed to have been the first commercial manufacturer of jigsaws. He managed to start quite a trend. For a good 20 years during the mid 1700s, all manufactured jigsaws were in the form of dissected maps like this one.
The maps were designed as teaching aids for geography classes. As pupils put the pieces together, they would learn how different countries connected to one another. Spilsbury certainly spotted a business opportunity. In the space of two years he marketed the eight map subjects most likely to appeal to upper class English parents: the world, the four continents then known (Africa, America, Asia and Europe), England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland. This map is a rare survivor - only one other Spilsbury map is known to exist in a British public collection.
Shelfmark: Maps 188.v.12
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