INLAID WORK, a curious kind of work, composed of pieces of hard fine wood of different colours, fastened, in thin slices, on a ground, and sometimes enriched with other substances, as tortoise-shell, ivory, tin, and brass.

There is another kind of marquetry, made of glasses of various colours instead of wood; and a third, where precious stones and the richest marbles are alone used. These, however, are more properly called mosaic work.

The art of inlaying is very ancient, and is supposed to have passed from the east to the west, as one of the spoils brought to the Romans from Asia. Indeed it was then Marquetry, but a simple thing; nor did it arrive at any tolerable perfection amongst the Italians till the fifteenth century. It seems, however, to have arrived at its height amongst the French in the seventeenth century.

Till John of Verona, a contemporary of Raffaelle, the finest works of this description were only black and white, or what we now call morescos; but that person, who had a genius for painting, stained his woods with dyes or boiled oils, which penetrated them. Yet he went no further than representing buildings and perspectives, which required no great variety of colours. Those who succeeded him not only improved on the invention of dyeing the woods, by a secret they found of burning without consuming them, which served exceedingly well for the shadows, but they had also the advantage of a number of fine new woods of naturally bright colours, obtained in consequence of the discovery of America. With these aids the art is now capable of imitating any thing; and hence some call it the art of painting in wood.

The ground on which the pieces are to be ranged and glued is ordinarily of oak or of fir well dried; and to prevent warping, it is composed of several pieces glued together. The wood to be used, being reduced into leaves of the thickness of a line, is either stained with some colour, or made black for shadow, which some effect by putting it in sand extremely heated over the fire, others by steeping it in lime-water and sublimate, and others again in oil of sulphur. When thus coloured, the contours of the piece are formed according to the parts of the design which they are to represent.

This last is the most difficult part of marquetry, and that in which the greatest patience and attention are required. The two chief instruments used in the work are the saw and the vice; the one to hold the matters to be formed, and the other to take off from the extremes according to occasion. The vice is of wood, having one of its clamps fixed and the other moveable, and it is opened and shut by the foot, by means of a cord fastened to a treadle. Its structure is very ingenious, yet simple enough.

The leaves to be formed (for there are frequently three or four of the same kind formed together) are put within the chaps of the vice, after being glued on the outermost part of the design of the profile of which they are to follow; then the workman pressing down the treadle, and thus holding fast the piece, runs with his saw over all the outlines of the design. By thus joining and forming three or four pieces into one, they not only gain time, but the matter is likewise the better enabled to sustain the efforts of the saw, which, how delicate soever it may be, and how lightly soever the workman may conduct it, without such a precaution would be apt to raise splinters, to the ruin of the beauty of the work.

When the work is to consist of one single kind of wood, or of tortoise-shell, on a copper or tin ground, or vice versa, they only form two leaves, one on the other, that is, a leaf of metal and a leaf of wood or shell; and this they call sawing in counterparts; for by filling the vacuities of one of the leaves by the pieces coming out of the other, the metal serves as a ground to the wood, and the wood as a ground to the metal.

All the pieces thus formed by the saw, and marked so as to be known again, and the shadow being given in the manner already mentioned, they veneer or fasten each in its place on the common ground, using for that purpose the best English glue. The whole is then put in a press to dry, planed over, and polished with the skin of the sea-dog, wax, and shave-grass, as in simple veneering; with this difference, however, that in marquetry the fine branches, and several of the more delicate parts of the figures, are touched up and finished with the graver. It is the cabinetmakers, joiners, and toymen, amongst us, who work in marquetry; and it is the enamellers and stone-cutters who deal in mosaic works. The instruments used by the former are mostly the same with those used by the ebonists.