French marquetry.(Pictures in Wood: The Hidden Colours of French Furniture, exhibit)(Brief Article)

The decorative technique of marquetry was first devised in the fifteenth century and has changed little since then. Wood, ivory bone, metal, or other materials are inlaid into a sheet of veneer that is in turn fixed to the surface of a piece of furniture. The vogue for marquetry on furniture originated in post-Renaissance Italy and reached its apogee in mid-eighteenth-century France.

Andre Charles Boulle, the principal ebeniste to Louis XIV, perfected the brass and tortoiseshell marquetry that came to bear his name. Boulle marquety was incorporated in work produced by the leading French cabinetmakers Jean Francois Oeben, Jean Francois Leleu, and Jean Henri Riesener. With the advent of factory-made furniture in the nineteenth century marquetry suffered a precipitous decline. In the twentieth century, however, craftsmen returned to this technique, again providing furniture for ...