Among the great lists of "two kinds of people," there's a particular category on my mind of late: those who do puzzles and those who do not. I'm not sure how one gets bitten by the puzzle bug, but I seem to have been so afflicted (I’m currently painstakingly assembling a 10,000 piece number of Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"), while my husband remains blissfully unencumbered. UK designer Rupert McKelvie has figured out a way to defy this type of categorization: his Missing Pieces Table is a brand new breed of fully functional jigsaw.

Missing Pieces Table. Designed by Rupert McKelvie.

Complete your Ensemble with the Missing Pieces Table

Not that traditional puzzles don't have a certain charm, but they’re not good for much once finished, except disassembling them and starting anew, or spraying them with fixative for a curious adornment. McKelvie's table, to the contrary, is a lovely dinner table with a charming classical silhouette.

But that's the view from afar. From up close-and very much in the manner of Seurat's Pointillist masterwork "Sunday in the Park"-the true nature of "Missing Pieces" is revealed.

McKelvie has created Missing Pieces from the frustration (and inspiration) of an incomplete puzzle set. With this custom piece, in fact, the designer has culled 4800 pieces from four incomplete puzzles, featuring the Arc de Triomphe, Winnie the Pooh, a night sky, and the Taj Mahal.

That may sound like an odd grouping, but, assuredly, with McKelvie's Missing Pieces the many disparate parts cohere into an aesthetic whole. Missing Pieces is an ingeniously conceived visual stunner. Never before has something so "useless" or "incomplete" made such an holistic impression.

Via MocoLoco.

About the Designer: Rupert McKelvie's trajectory into design had an odd point of departure: a classical boat building class in Lyme Regis, Dorset. From there, he sallied to Falmouth College of the Arts where "he began to explore his ideas in product design with the knowledge he had developed as a trained craftsman." His work evinces this synergy between inspired creativity and studied craftsmanship, especially in regards to his intricate Missing Pieces Table.