Fitzgerald painted fairies for most of his career. Welcome to our Fairy's Funeral version made into a wooden jigsaw puzzle.

John Anster Fitzgerald was nicknamed "Fairy Fitzgerald" by his contemporaries, and not affectionately. The Victorian art world found his paintings unsettling. 

Some art historians believe the hallucinatory quality of his processions and moonlit grottos came from opium or laudanum. The painting was exhibited at the British Institution in 1864. Nobody agreed on what to make of it then, either.

📖 The Story Behind This Piece

The Fairy's Funeral was shown publicly in 1864, during a decade when Victorian England had developed a genuine cultural fixation on the supernatural. Séances were fashionable. Spiritualism was debated in serious journals. Fitzgerald painted into that exact mood: a moonlit cortege of fairies carrying their dead through an overgrown landscape crowded with watching creatures. The jewel-like color sat against the macabre subject without resolving the tension. That friction is still visible in the painting today.

Fitzgerald painted fairies for most of his career, which was long and not especially fashionable during his lifetime. What made his work distinct from other Victorian fairy painters was a quality of wrongness — scenes that felt observed rather than invented, as if he had access to something his peers didn't. Whether that was pharmaceutical or visionary, the art historians haven't settled it. The painting is now held in a private collection, represented by The Maas Gallery in London.

During assembly, the moonlit landscape creates a specific sorting problem: Fitzgerald's greens and shadow-blues bleed into each other across the overgrown foliage. In print on a screen, the midtones flatten. On wood, UV printing holds the micro-contrast in those dark areas, so the attending creatures half-hidden in the undergrowth stay visible rather than merging into background. That section of the puzzle takes longer than you'd expect, because there's more there than there first appears to be.

Works well as a birthday gift for someone who collects art books or prints. Strong fit for a holiday gift when the recipient already has everything comfortable and safe. The subject matter makes it genuinely unsuitable for children, which for the right adult is exactly the point.

🧩 Puzzle Specifications

✔️ Precision laser-cut wooden pieces
✔️ 3mm MDF core — rigid, warp-resistant, built to last
✔️ UV printing directly on wood — no paper laminate, no peeling
✔️ Traditional grid-cut design
✔️ Handcrafted wooden keepsake box included
✔️ Made to order — ships in 3–4 weeks

💎 Why This Puzzle Lasts

Most wooden puzzle makers charge $300 to $500. The craft justifies it. WAWW gets to the same place differently: direct manufacturing, no wholesale chain, no retail markup, made to order so nothing sits in a warehouse. Same materials. Lower number.

The 3mm MDF core is why the pieces still click cleanly after years of use. Cardboard compresses and warps; MDF holds its shape and its edges. UV printing goes directly onto the wood surface rather than onto a paper laminate laid over it. No laminate means no peeling at the corners, no fading from light exposure, and the texture of the wood itself stays visible under the ink in a way that paper covers up.

The traditional grid cut is a deliberate choice. Every piece has a clear job: find the right place and it clicks in with a resistance that tells you plainly when you've got it right. The wooden keepsake box is not packaging; it's part of the object. Most buyers keep it on a shelf near the frame. The box is where visitors start asking questions. Made to order means your puzzle didn't exist before you ordered it. Three to four weeks from order to door.

The Fairy's Funeral has been in private hands since 1864; most people have never seen the original. A framed reconstruction at home is a reasonable substitute.