Marqueterie or marquetry is the art of applying designs, patterns, and pictures using veneer pieces to decorate furniture, panels, flooring, and small ornamental items. Marqueterie enhances an object’s value and aesthetic and was used to denote status and wealth. Marqueterie also emphasizes the borders and dimensions of a room.
What is the History of Marqueterie?
The art of veneer marqueterie was influenced by 16th-century Naples and Florence. Inlaying techniques in Florence using solid marble pieces with adornments of jaspers, semi-precious stones, and fitted marbles inspired the process of marqueterie. It was also during this period that wood marqueterie flourished in Antwerp and made its way to mid-17th century France to embellish luxury furniture. Pierre Golle and Andre-Charles Boulle were famous cabinet-makers who made use of marqueterie in their works.
Floral marqueterie was widely used in the 1750s on Parisian furniture, particularly by cabinet-makers Bernard II van Risamburgh, Simon-Francois Oeben, and Jean-Pierre Latz. the Bureau du Roi was a notable royal French furniture featuring veneer marqueterie made by Jean Henri Riesener.
What Materials are used to Create Marqueterie?
Wood (mahogany, walnut, oak, ash, merbau, wenge) is the most used material for creating marqueterie. Marqueterie may also be made of ivory, bone, marble, tortoiseshell, gems, and metals mixed with wood to develop one-of-a-kind designs.
What are Developments in the Process of Making Marqueterie?
The most straightforward method of marqueterie is gluing two sheets of veneer temporarily and then cutting this to come up with two panels with the same design. More contemporary marqueterie makes use of knife-cut veneers which typically takes longer to finish. This led to the development of scroll saw or fret techniques. Sand-shading is utilized to give a three-dimensional effect on pictures. Marqueterie may also be achieved by engraving fine lines into a picture and then filling the engravings with shellac and India ink mixture.
The VRIZ technique was created by Georges Vriz in the 1980s which involves putting two veneer layers over each other and then sanding the topmost layer until fiber transparency is achieved.
Newer methods such as laser cutting have been used to create marqueterie. The design is made into a CAD or vector file to cut each piece individually where the beam power is calibrated according to the type of wood and its thickness.
