Inlaid woodwork, in which decorative material such as wood or ivory is set into the surface of the veneer, has accompanied the art of furniture making for thousands of years. Ivory inlay can be seen in Egyptian furniture, particularly in small, meticulously executed toilet caskets, but it is difficult to locate in Greek and Roman furniture, today known almost exclusively from pictorial representations.
In Holland and England an extremely rich form of marquetry was developed, incorporating floral motifs in various kinds of exotic wood on walnut. English grandfather clocks made around 1700 often had richly inlaid cases.
The process became popular in France in the late 16th century and received an enormous stimulus in the two following centuries as the European economy started to expand and created a demand for luxurious domestic furniture. The work of André-Charles Boulle, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, achieved such beauty that furniture adorned with marquetry patterns is sometimes known as boulle work.
To produce the desired effect, the ébéniste, or specialist in marquetry, either drew the pattern directly on the base wood or affixed a paper pattern onto the wood. The thin sheets were then cut out with a burin or, later, sometimes with a saw, the pattern assembled and glued onto the carcass. Boulle initiated an ingenious method for use with contrasting materials, such as ebony and ivory. Two sheets of identical thickness were glued together and the pattern cut out. When the sheets were taken apart, it was then possible to decorate two panels of the same size with identical patterns in contrasting materials. As marquetry-work tends to splinter, vulnerable places such as the outer edges of the design and keyholes were often protected with mounts of bronze or other metals, often of an intricate shape, which add to the decorative richness of the piece of furniture. Marquetry patterns became more and more complex and, though often floral, they could also include narrative subjects and the like. The range of materials used also became more varied, including not only rare tropical woods and metals such as silver, bronze, and brass but also a wide range of other materials of a semiprecious nature.
At Craft Experience natural and stained veneers are used to provide the rich colours for the marquetry inlay. The designs are cut from stacked sheets using the method pioneered by Boulle, and giving each design a unique combination of veneers. The marquetry is used to adorn the sides of the toyboxes and as an art form in the production of pictures for the nursery wall.