Marquetry

Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French marqueter, to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns or designs. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels appreciated in their own right.

Marquetry differs from the more ancient craft of inlay, or intarsia, in which a solid body of one material is cut out to receive sections of another to form the surface pattern. The word derives from a Middle French word meaning "inlaid work".

The veneers used are primarily woods, but may include bone, ivory, turtle-shell (conventionally called "tortoiseshell"), mother-of-pearl, pewter, brass or fine metals. Marquetry using colored straw was a specialty of some European spa resorts from the end of the 18th century. Many exotic woods as well as common varieties can be employed, from the near-white of boxwood to the near-black of ebony; colors not found in nature can be achieved by applying dye to a veneer that retains stains well, such as sycamore.

The French cabinet maker André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) specialized in furniture using metal and either wood or tortoiseshell together, the latter acting as the background.

The simplest kind of marquetry uses only two sheets of veneer, which are temporarily glued together and cut with a fine saw, producing two contrasting panels of identical design, (in French called partie and contre-partie, "part" and "counterpart").

Marquetry as a modern craft most commonly uses knife-cut veneers. However, the knife-cutting technique usually requires a lot of time. For that reason, many marquetarians have switched to fret or scroll saw techniques. Other requirements are a pattern of some kind, some brown gummed tape (this kind of tape is used because as its moistened glue dries the tape shrinks, pulling the veneer pieces closer together), PVA glue and a base-board with balancing veneers on the alternate face to compensate stresses. Finishing the piece will require fine abrasive paper, always backed by a sanding block. Choices of sealers and finishes that can be applied include ordinary varnish, special varnishes, polyurethane (either oil or water based), wax, and French polish.

Sand shading is a process used to make a picture appear to be more three-dimensional. A piece of veneer to be incorporated into a picture is partially submerged in hot sand for a few seconds.

Another shading process is engraving fine lines into a picture and filling them with a mixture of India ink and shellac.