Intarsio

Intarsia is a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry. The start of the practice dates before the seventh century.

The technique of intarsia inlays sections of wood (at times with contrasting ivory or bone, or mother-of-pearl) within the solid stone matrix of floors and walls or of table tops and other furniture; by contrast marquetry assembles a pattern out of veneers glued upon the carcase. It is thought that the word 'intarsia' is derived from the Latin word 'interserere' which means "to insert".

When Egypt came under Arab rule in the seventh century, indigenous arts of intarsia and wood inlay, which lent themselves to non-representational decors and tiling patterns, spread throughout the maghreb. The technique of intarsia was already perfected in Islamic North Africa before it was introduced into Christian Europe through Sicily and Andalusia. The art was further developed in Siena and by Sienese masters at the cathedral of Orvieto, where figurative intarsia made their first appearance, c. 1330 and continuing into the 15th century and in northern Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, spreading to German centers and introduced into London by Flemish craftsmen in the later sixteenth century. The most elaborate examples of intarsia can be found in cabinets of this period, which were items of great luxury and prestige. After about 1620, marquetry tended to supplant intarsia in urbane cabinet work.

In the 1980s, intarsia began to gain popularity in the United States as a technique for creating wooden art using a band saw or scroll saw. Early practitioners made money both by selling their art, and also selling patterns used to create intarsia. In France proposed a new method which revolutionise the marquetry. Contrary to all the other techniques, based on the generally accepted idea of a decoration "flat" made of wood or other matters, George VRIZ brings an important innovation: Thanks to the superposition of the layers of wood, and with the possibility offered by plating to create "transparencies", these means make it possible to bring thus sometimes the light, the color, a veil, a depth. These made impossible to create with a traditional method are made using judicious but controlled sandpaperings.

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