The beginnings of art in carving are found amongst the relics of prehistoric races, and when it arrived at the degree of perfection it afterwards attained in the East, inlaying was a natural result. We find this to have been practised by the ancient Egyptain and other Asiatic races. Its attendant, veneering, was also employed by them, workmen applying the veneer with glue being represented on the Egyptian monuments. As civilization advanced westward, the Greeks and Romans followed in the art, the latter race inlaying their furniture with marquetry or tarsia-work, using ivory, ebony, box, palm, bird’s-eye maple, beech, and other woods. Their bronze articles they damascened with ornaments of the precious metals and metallic amalgams. The spirit of the Middle Ages was adverse to the development of this art, and but few traces of it are found. In the South Kensington Museum is a coffer of cypress, with flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition, that dates from the 14th century. The Venetians derived their marquetry from Persia and India, as is indicated by the geometric patterns inlaid with ivory, metal, and woods, stained of various colours. Florence took a prominent place in this manufacture in the 15th century. Certosina·work was the result; it was so called from the great Certosa, Charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery, between Milan and Pavia, in the choir-fittings of which this kind of ornament, ivory inlaid into solid cypress and walnut wood, is employed. Work in the Persian style, with its geometric figures, still reaches us from Bombay, the present great seat of the Parsees.

The Renaissance artists chiefly employed wood in making furniture, ornamenting it with gilding and painting, and inlaying it with agate, carnelian, lapis-lazuli, marble of various tints, ivory, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, and various woods. Boule improved upon this by inlaying brass devices into wood or tortoise-shell, which last he greatly used according to the design he had immediately in view, whether flowers, scenes, scrolls, &c. to these he sometimes added enamelled metal. In this process the brass is thin, and, like the ornamental wood or tortoise-shell, forms a veneer. In the first instance the production of his work was costly, owing to the quantity of valuable material that was cut away and wasted, and, in addition, the labour lost in separately cutting for each article or copy of a pattern. By a subsequent improvement Boule effected an economy by gluing together various sheets of material and sawing through the whole, so that an equal number of figures and matrices were produced at one operation. Boule adopted from time to time various plans for the improvement of his designs. He placed gold-leaf or other suitable material under the tortoise-shell to produce such effect as he required; he chased the brass-work with a graver for a like purpose, and, when the metal required to be fastened down with brass pins or nails, these were hammered flat and disguised by ornamental chasing. He also adopted, in relief or in the round, brass feet, brackets, edgings, and other ornaments of appropriate design, partly to protect the corners and edges of his work, and partly for decoration. He subsequently used other brass mountings, such as claw-feet to altars and pedestals, or figures in high or low relief, according to the effect he desired to produce. Boule’s contemporary, Reisner, a German, used a variety of woods, tulip-wood more especially, in the production of flowers and other ornamental designs, contrasting the dark with the light kinds, crossing the grain, and employing other ingenious devices. After him this particular style was called Reisner-work. The Spaniards of the 16th century used silver for inlaying.

See Grande Dictionnaire Universel du XlXe siècle; Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon, Altenberg, 1868; Encyclopédie des Gens du Monde; Bemrose’s Buhl-work and Marquetry, a very useful manual; Pollen’s Furniture and Wood-work.