Wood Veneer Marquetry

Some people spelle it as Marqueterie. It comes from the French "marqueter" and defines the art of crafting veneer pieces to panel doors, furniture, or flooring to create a decorative pattern, design, or picture that sits on the surface of the original structure.?Patterns in marquetry may be random or structured or maybe real images of such things as people, animals, or items.

Doors, floors, and furniture inlaid with precious metals, glass, stones, and of course, pieces of veneer were known from the ancient world and Roman examples have been recovered from the very first century. Pompeii and Herculaneum showing us that this technique was very well crafted. This work, called "opere di commessi", has medieval parallels in Central Italian "Cosmati" - a work of inlaid marble floors, altars, and columns. In English, the technique is known as pietra dura, for the "hardstones" used: onyx, jasper, cornelian, lapis lazuli, and colored marbles. In Florence, the Chapel of the Medici at San Lorenzo is completely covered in a colored marble facing using this demanding jig-sawn technique.

Techniques of wood marquetry were developed in Antwerp and other Flemish centers of luxury cabinet-making during the early 16th century. The craft was imported full-blown to France after the mid-seventeenth century, to create furniture of unprecedented luxury being made at the royal manufactory of the Gobelins, charged with providing furnishings to decorate Versailles and the other royal residences of Louis XIV. Early masters of French marquetry were the Fleming Pierre Golle and his son-in-law, André-Charles Boulle, who founded a dynasty of royal and Parisian cabinet-makers (ébénistes) and gave his name to a technique of marquetry employing tortoiseshell and brass with pewter in arabesque or intricately foliate designs.?

Boulle marquetry dropped out of favor in the 1720s but was revived in the 1780s. In the decades between, carefully matched quarter-sawn veneers sawn from the same piece of timber were arranged symmetrically on case pieces and contrasted with gilt-bronze mounts. Floral marquetry came into favor in Parisian furniture in the 1750s, employed by cabinet-makers like Bernard II van Risamburgh, Jean-Pierre Latz and Simon-Fran?ois Oeben. The most famous royal French furniture veneered with marquetry are the pieces delivered by Jean Henri Riesener in the 1770s and 1780s. The Bureau du Roi was the most famous of these famous masterpieces.

Marquetry was introduced into London furniture at the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the product of immigrant Dutch 'inlayers', whose craft traditions owed a lot to Antwerp. Panels of elaborately scrolling "seaweed" marquetry of box or holly contrasting with walnut appeared on tabletops, cabinets, and long-case clocks. At the end of the 17th century, a new influx of French Huguenot craftsmen went to London, but marquetry in England had little appeal in the anti-French, more Chinese-inspired high-style English furniture (miscalled 'Queen Anne') after ca 1720. Marquetry was revived as a vehicle of Neoclassicism and a 'French taste' in London furniture, starting in the late 1760s. Cabinet-makers associated with London-made marquetry furniture, 1765–1790, include Thomas Chippendale and less familiar names, like John Linnell, the French craftsman Pierre Langlois, and the firm of William Ince and John Mayhew.

Although marquetry is a technique separate from the inlay, English marquetry-makers were called "inlayers" throughout the 18th century. In Paris, before 1789, makers of veneered or marquetry furniture (ébénistes) belonged to a separate guild from chair-makers and other furniture craftsmen working in solid wood (menuisiers).

Marquetry was a feature of some centers of German cabinet-making from c. 1710. The craft and artistry of David Roentgen, Neuwied, (and later at Paris as well) were unsurpassed, even in Paris, by any 18th-century marquetry craftsman.

Marquetry was not a mainstream fashion in 18th-century Italy, but the neoclassical marquetry of Giuseppe Maggiolini, made in Milan at the end of the century is notable.

Marquetry is often confused with parquetry but is actually very different.?The main difference is that marquetry is the application or addition of a veneer to a smooth surface, whereas parquetry is the creation of a design or image made using blocks or strips of wood.