Part 1 (1/2)

Intarsia and Marquetry

by F Hamilton Jackson

GENERAL PREFACE TO THE SERIES

If there is one quality which more than another marks the demand of the present day it is the requirement of novelty In every direction the question which is asked is not, ”Is this fresh thing good? Is it appropriate to, and well-fitted for, its intended uses?” but ”Is it novel?” And the constant change of fashi+on sets a premium upon the satisfaction of this demand and enlists the coe While there are directions in which this desire is not altogether harmful, since at least many monstrosities offend our eyes but for a short tiner is likely to prove disastrous to his reputation, and recent phases in which an attempt has been made to throw aside as effete and outworn the forroith the centuries, and to produce so entirely fresh and individual, have sho impossible it is at this period of the world's history to dispense with tradition, and, escaping from the accumulated experience of the race, set forth with childlike _navete_ Careful study of these experiments discloses the fact that in as far as they are successful in proportion and line they approach the successes of previous generations, and that the undigested use of natural _htmare

The object ainer and craftsinality by setting before the of the experience of past tiner had a closer contact with the n was carried out than is usual at present Since both design and craftsmanshi+p as known until the end of the 18th century were the outcome of centuries of experience of the use of material and of the endeavour to meet daily requirements, it may be justly called folly to cast all this aside as the fripperies of bygone fashi+on which craner, and atte, even if it were possible At the same time it is not intended to advocate the direct copyisood, bad, or indifferent Some minds find inspiration in the contemplation of natural objects, while others find the same stimulus in the works of reat stress upon the former source of inspiration, and considers the latter heretical, while, with a strange inconsistency, acclairowth, and a treatment which is often alien to the material It is the hope of the author to assist the second class of n and craftsmanshi+p, and perhaps even to convert some of those whose talents are at present wasted in the chase of the will-o'-the-wisp of fancied novelty and individuality Much of what appears to the uneducated and ill-informed talent as new is really but the re-discovery of _one reater acquaintance with their triumphs is likely, one would hope, to lead students, whether designers or craftsns indifferently executed which have little but a fancied novelty to recommend them

It is intended that each volun and craft treated of, with exa of the difficulties to be encountered in its practice, workshop recipes, and thethe effects required, with a chapter upon the limitations i those limitations adopted by those who have not frankly accepted them

PREFACE

The subject treated of in this handbook has, until lately, received scant attention in England; and except for short notices of a general nature contained in such books as Waring's ”Arts Connected with Architecture,” technical descriptions, such as those in Holtzapffel's ”Turning and Mechanical Manipulation,” and a few fugitive papers, has not been treated in the English language On the Continent it has, however, been the subject of considerable research, and in Italy, Germany, and France books have been published which either include it as part of the larger subject of furniture, or treat in considerable detail instances of specially-is Froather asan insistence upon unimportant details, and now present the results of my selection for the consideration of that part of the public which is interested in the handicrafts which ner and craftsman, whose business it is or may be to produce such works in harmonious co-operation in the present day, as they often did in days gone by, and, it may be hoped, with a success akin to that attained in those periods to which we look back as the golden age of art

The books from which I have drawn :--

In Italian--Borghese and Banchi's ”Nuovi documenti per la storia dell'

Arte Senese”; Brandolese's ”Pitture, sculture, &c, di Padova”; Caffi's ”Dei lavori d'intaglio in legname e d'intarsia nel Cattedrale di Ferrara”; Calvi's ”Dei professori de belle arti che fiorirono in Milano ai telione's ”Ricordi”; Erculei's paper in his ”Catalogue of the Exhibition of works of carving and inlay held at Ro and inlaid work in the Jurors' report on the Exhibition of 1867 in Paris”; Lanzi's ”History of Painting in Italy”; Locatelli's ”Iconografia Italiana”; Marchese's ”Lives of Dominican Artists”; Milanesi's ”Documenti per la Storia dell' Arte Senese”; Morelli's ”Notizie d'opere di disegno nella prima meta dell' Secolo XVI”; Tassi's ”Vite di pittori, architetti, &c, Bergamaschi”; Temanza's ”Vite dei piu celebri architetti, &c, Dominicani”; Tiraboschi's ”Biblioteca Modenese”; Della Valle's ”Lettere Senesi sopra le belle Arti”; Vasari's ”Lives,” with Milanesi's notes and corrections, and papers in the ”Bullettino di Arti, Industrie e Curiosita Veneziane,” the ”Atti e memorie della Societa Savonese,” the ”Archivio Storico dell' Arte and its continuation as L'Arte,” and the ”Archivio Storico Lombardo,” by such men as Michele Caffi, G M Urb, Ottavio Varaldo, Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri and L T Belgrano

In German--Becker and Hefner Alteneck's ”Kunstwerke and Geraths Schaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance”; Bucher's ”Geschichte der Technischen Kunst”; Burckhardt's ”Additions to Kugler's Geschichte der Baukunst, and Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien”; Demmin's ”Studien uber die Stofflich-bildenden Kunste”; Von Falke's ”Geschichte des deutsches Kunstgewerbes”; Scherer's ”Technik und Geschichte der Intarsia”; Schewerbliche Handbucher”; Teirich's ”Ornamente aus der Bluthezeit italienischer Renaissance,” and articles in ”Blatter fur Kunstgewerbe,” and the ”Kunstgewerbeblatt of the Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst,” by such

In French--asselineau's ”A Boulle, ebeniste de Louis 14”; Burckhardt's ”Le Cicerone”; Champeaux's ”Le bois appliquee au mobilier,” and ”Le ique, &c”; Luchet's ”L'Arte industriel a l'Exposition Universelle de 1867,” and other encyclopaedias

In English--”The hand and mechanical ton Catalogue of Ancient and Modern furniture”; Leader Scott's ”The Cathedral builders”; To's ”The Arts connected with architecture”; and Digby Wyatt's ”Industrial Arts of the 19th Century,” together with detached articles found in various publications

Those who desire further examples of arabesque patterns en und Holzdecken”; Lacher's ”Mustergultige holzintarsien der Deutschen Renaissance aus dem 16 und 17 Jahrhundert”; Lachner's ”Geschichte der Holzbaukunst in Deutschland”; Lichtwark's ”Der ornamentstich der deutschen Fruhrenaissance”; Meurer's ”Italienische Flachornamente aus der Zeit der Renaissance”; Teirich's ”Ornamente aus der Bluthezeit italienischer Renaissance,” and Rhenius ”Eingelegte Holzornamente der Renaissance in Schlesien von 1550-1650”

I have thought it better to run the risk of incompleteness than to overload the text with the ners and crafts is known, believing thatto the work and lives of those about whose capacity there can be no question

My thanks are due to the officials of the British Museum Library and of the Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museuiven me inkindness and courtesy; and to the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum for similar kindness and assistance

I have also to thank my friend Mr C Bessant, whose experience in all kinds of cabinet work is so great, for very kindly looking over the section dealing with the processes of manufacture

F HAMILTON JACKSON

INTARSIA AND MARQUETRY

HISTORICAL NOTES--ANTIQUITY

The word ”intarsia” is derived fro to the best Italian authorities, though Scherer says there was a siold and silver in some other metal, an art practised in Da; and that at first the tords , but after a time one was applied to work in wood and the other to metal work In the ”Musobrbonico,” xii, p 4, xv, p 6, the word ”Tausia” is said to be of Arabic origin, and there is no doubt that the art is Oriental It perhaps reached Europe either by way of Sicily or through the Spanish Moors ”Marquetry,” on the other hand, is a word of in, and comes from the French ”marqueter,” to spot, to mark; it seems, therefore, accurate to apply the former term to those inlays of wood in which a space is first sunk in the solid to be afterwards filled with a piece of wood (or sometimes some other material) cut to fit it, and to use the latter for theseveral sheets of differently-coloured thin wood placed together to the saht or ten copies of different colours may be produced which will fit into each other, and only require subsequent arranging and glueing, as well as for the more artistic effects of the marquetry of the 17th and 18th centuries, which were produced with si is of the most remote antiquity, and the student may see in the cases of the British Museum, at the Louvre, and in other yptian inlaid patterns of metal and ivory, or ebony or vitreous pastes, upon both wood and ivory, dating from the 8th and 10th centuries before the Christian Era, or earlier

The Greeks and Romans also made use of it for costly furniture and ornamental sculpture; in Book 23 of the ”Odyssey,” Ulysses, describing to Penelope the bride-bed which he had ht at the bedstead till I had finished it, and old, and of silver, and of ivory”; the statue and throne of Jupiter at Olympia had ivory, ebony, and many other materials used in its construction, and the chests in which clothes were kept, mentioned by Homer, were some of them ornamented with inlaid work in the precious metals and ivory Pausanias describes the box of Kypselos, in the opisthodomos of the Temple of Hera, at Olympia, as elliptical in shape, ical representations, partly carved in wood and partly inlaid with gold and ivory, in five strips which encircled the whole box, one above another