red sanders, sapan, ebony, fustic (a species of mulberry), Zante (a
species of sumach). "Ebony is the black pear tree of Madagascar, at
least they make cider of its fruit." So says M. Luchet in an interesting
excursus on furniture manufacture in his book on the Paris Exhibition of
1867, in which he gives further details of ancient manufacture and its
modern imitation. "I know a factory," he says, "where the tortoiseshell
is false, the mother-of-pearl false, the ivory holly wood; the brass is
the only real thing, because science applied to industry has not yet
found out how to imitate it. When Boulle employed wood in his work it
was ebony--they have abandoned that for blackened pear wood, under the
pretext that ebony is a hard, close wood which twists, splits, and
cracks, takes glue badly, and refuses varnish. So that they call a man
who never uses ebony 'ébéniste.' They did not trouble about these things
in the time of Louis XIV. They never varnished their furniture, so it
did not matter that ebony would not take varnish.... There are two sorts
of tortoiseshell, that of the Antilles, often bad and scaly, but good
enough for common work, because it is thin and equal in thickness, and a
little carmine vermilion gives it a not unpleasant red tint. The Indian
tortoiseshell is thick and opaque and unequal, demanding preparation and
welding. It can only be used for expensive work, and takes easily a
black preparation which makes it magnificently austere." One ought to
mention here that good shell was often treated with carmine vermilion or
with gold, and that without a colour background it loses half its beauty
and value.
"In modern times six or eight couples of shell and metal are sawn
together, whereas two was the number in the fine period. This saves
money. A new Boulle bed, secretary, or chest of drawers should cost 15
to 20,000 francs. You may easily get one for 2000 made of rubbish. An
honest chest of drawers with tolerable mountings is worth 1500 francs.
In gelatine tortoiseshell and brass or zinc of the future 100 is the
price.... The mode still practised in Paris of making a good 'placage'
in preparation for marquetry or Boulle work is as follows:--A thicker or
thinner sheet of Italian poplar is placed between two sheets of oak with
the grain the other way, then on the external sheet of oak is placed the
wood intended to be seen, also with the grain the other way, the whole
of convenient thickness, and glued with the best glue. Good glue is the
nurse of the wood, say the masters. These four or five thicknesses of
wood pulling against each other neutralise all bad effects, and the
result is very good. The external covering is usually either mahogany,
American walnut, or violet wood (a sort of cedar). Sometimes it is
ebony, or perhaps a collection of small pieces of wood, such as acacia,
which are called by all sorts of pretty names. It is of this fine and
good 'plaqué' that they still make cupboards at 1000 francs, beds at 600
francs, and bureaus at 800 francs, which are the success and the pride
of Parisian joinery." The marqueteurs of Nice made use of olive for
veined grey backgrounds, orange and lemon for pale yellow, carob for
dark red, jujube tree for rose colour, holly for white, and charred fig
for black; arbutus served for dark flesh, and sumach for light.
It is advisable after the marquetry has been put together to reduce the
surface to a level and do something in the way of polishing, though it
is not necessary to carry the process as far as is often done by the
cheap furniture manufacturers. If nothing but wood has been used, the
surface should be reduced to a level with a toothing plane and scraped
with a joiner's scraper, taking care to apply it obliquely to the joints
as far as possible, so as to avoid digging down and so failing in the
object aimed at. If done very well and carefully it sometimes only
requires to be rubbed down with its own shavings, but it is more usually
necessary to follow with a worn piece of glass-paper on a flat piece of
cork, but the dust must not be allowed to collect into hard lumps upon
it, as these lumps would scratch the surface. Holtzapffel says that when
metal, ivory, pearl, shell, or tortoiseshell are mixed with the wood the
surface must be carefully levelled with flat files, ending with a very
smooth one, after which the scraper should be used if possible and
followed by glass or emery paper very sparingly. When metal
preponderates emery paper is best, and really good _sand_ paper may also
be used, but all paper should have very little "cut," should be applied
dry, and allowed to become clogged, so as to act principally as a hard
dry rubber or burnisher. If the polishing is at all in excess the wood
will get rubbed or worn down below the metal. The fine finish required
when tortoiseshell and metal are used is got by rubbing with blocks of
charcoal used endways with oil and the finest rotten-stone powder, much
like polishing marble, using oil instead of water. Wet polishing should
not be used for inlaid works; the water may soften the glue. A
superficial wetting is likely to warp the woods and make them curl up at
the edges, and the grain of the wood is almost certain to rise. Oil is
better than water, but light woods are almost certain to become stained
by polishing powders and fluid. To avoid this modern marquetry is often
covered with varnish applied with friction like French polish, or laid
on in several coats with a brush and polished off with pumice and rotten
stone, like the Vernis Martin, being first levelled with a file or
scraper and smoothed with glass-paper.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The panel illustrated from the Albert and Victoria Museum is a good
average specimen of this kind, but not quite a masterpiece.
THE LIMITATIONS AND CAPABILITIES OF THE ART
The process described, by which the early works in intarsia were
produced, was slow and tedious; and, as may be supposed, though fame
might be won by its exercise, the winning of fortune was a very
different thing. Domenico di Nicolò, who made the stalls in the chapel
of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, and was thence called "del Coro," or
"dei Cori," a name which descended to his children in place of their
proper name of Spinelli, is an example in point. The petitions to the
priors already referred to, printed in Milanesi's Documenti per la
Storia dell' Arte Senese, show how little a man of talent, who was
constantly employed for many years and gained great reputation in his
art, could do to provide for his old age; and many returns of both
painters, sculptors, and woodworkers, made for the purposes of taxation
and printed in the same book, show that even in a great and flourishing
town like Siena, which prided itself on its artistic reputation, it was
often most difficult for the craftsmen, on whose work that reputation
was based, to make a living.[4] It is true that there were thirty-four
workshops for wood carving and intarsia in Florence at one time (1478,
as Fabroni says in his life of Lorenzo the Magnificent), from which one
may conclude that work of a certain sort was plentiful and lucrative,
and panels of intarsia were certainly sometimes exported, but it may be
observed that all the most celebrated intarsiatori practised some other
form of art also, and generally abandoned intarsia sooner or later; the
exceptions being those who belonged to the Olivetan and Dominican
orders, and therefore had no anxiety about their living. Of these
craftsmen the most celebrated were Fra Giovanni da Verona and Fra
Damiano of Bergamo, whose works were so elaborate and so finely executed
as to excite the suspicion that they were painted with the brush, though
supposed to be executed with wood and the chisel. The anecdote of the
Emperor Charles V.'s trial of Fra Damiano's tarsia panel in S. Domenico,
Bologna, attests the wonderful quality of the work, and its success in
attaining a doubtful aim, and Barili's inscription in the panel showing
himself at work shows that it was not uncommon for such panels to be
supposed to be the work of the brush. The designs from which the
intarsia was executed were often furnished by painters of repute, and
pictures or portions of pictures were copied, a proceeding which Fra
Giovanni's discovery of stains and washes of different kinds made
easier, until the proper limits of the art were far overpassed, and its
decorative quality quite lost sight of in the attempt to rival a form of
art the requirements of which were quite different. The beautiful
arabesques, which the designers of the early Renaissance poured forth
with exhaustless fertility, show the capabilities of the process for
decorating flat surfaces, and the perspectives of cupboards and
buildings were often most successful without passing the limits imposed
by the material.
The question of the limits within which the craftsman's effort should be
confined in any form of art craftsmanship is a thorny one, for the
attempt to overstep those limits has always had attractions for the
craftsman who is master of his craft, and who sighs for fresh fields to
conquer, knowing better than the outsider what are the difficulties
which he has overcome successfully in any piece of work from the side of
craftsmanship, though often with disastrous results when the matter is
regarded from the point of view of excellence in design and purity of
taste. It has been maintained by purists in modern times that all
engraving or shading of the pieces of wood used in forming the design is
illegitimate; and if this be so, it is equally illegitimate to stain any
of them; but it is undeniable that a great addition to the resources of
the inlayer was made by the discoveries of Fra Giovanni, and it seems
unreasonable to refuse to make any use of them because later
intarsiatori abused these means of gaining effect. The earliest work, it
is true, depends mainly upon silhouette for its beauty, but does not
altogether disdain lines within the main outline, and the abandonment of
these inner lines, whether made by graver or saw, so reduces the
possibilities of choice of subject as to restrict the designer to a
simplicity which is apt to become bald. A great deal may be done by
choice of pieces of wood and arrangement of the direction of the
lines of the grain; some of Fra Giovanni's perspectives show very
suggestive skies made in this manner, and Fra Damiano was very
successful in thus suggesting the texture of much veined and coloured
marble and of rocks, but directly the human figure enters into the
design these expedients are felt to be insufficient and inexpressive,
and inner lines have perforce to be introduced. The opposite extreme is
such work as the panels by the brothers Caniana in the Colleoni Chapel
at Bergamo, in which the composition and drawing of the figures recall
the designs of the Caracci, and the technique of the shading reminds one
of a copper plate, while the tinting and gradation of the colours take
away all impression of a work in wood, substituting that of a coloured
engraving. Here it is quite evident that the desire to imitate pictorial
qualities has led the craftsman far away from what should have been his
aim, viz., to display the qualities of the material which he was using
to the best advantage, consistently with the position and purpose of his
work in it. Not that perfection of workmanship is to be decried, though
it is only occasionally that one is able to make use of, or indeed
produce it. But the æsthetic sense demands that consideration for
material and purpose in every production which the joy and pride of the
craftsman in overcoming difficulties sometimes prevents him from
giving. Notwithstanding the beauty of much of the marquetry of the
periods of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., one often feels that design has
been put to one side in the endeavour to gain a realistic effect, and
the same defect may be traced more clearly in the clumsier Dutch and
German productions. Even in the Italian work of an earlier date every
now and then the same fault peeps out, though the excellent taste of the
nation at that period prevented the Italians from falling into such
excesses, and one generally feels the wood even in their most elaborate
perspectives. It may be asserted in a general way that the more colours
are used the less likelihood is there of the effect being quite
satisfactory, and that any light and shade introduced should be of the
simplest kind. A slight darkening of parts of the wood to gain a certain
suggestion of roundness is quite admissible, but the expedient should be
used with discretion, lavish employment of it leading to heaviness of
effect and a monotony of tone which are most unpleasing. If ivory or
metals are introduced the greatest care is necessary to prevent them
from giving a spotty and uneven effect to the design, for neither these
two materials nor mother-of-pearl marry quite with the tone of the wood;
and this inequality is likely to increase with age, as the wood becomes
richer and mellower in colour. Such materials should be so used that
the points where they occur may form a pattern in themselves
independently of the rest of the design, so that the effect may be
pleasing at first sight, before the general meaning of the less
prominent details is realised. Any other way of using them courts
failure, since the effect of the whole design is ruined by the
uncalculated prominence and inequality of these materials here and
there. The Dutch sometimes made use of mother-of-pearl, in pieces upon
which engraving broke up the hard glitter of the material, mingled with
brass wire and nails or studs driven into the surface of the wood. The
two materials appear to be quite harmonious, and small articles
decorated in this manner are effective and satisfactory. The Italian use
of ivory for the decoration of musical instruments, chess and backgammon
boards, and other small objects is almost always successful, the
proportion between wood and ivory being well judged, and the forms of
the ornament pleasing.
[Illustration: _To face page 122._
Plate 53.--_Panel from S. Maria in Organo, Verona._]
The modern French marquetry, though exceedingly clever and beautiful in
its use of various woods, errs by want of consideration of the surface
to be decorated, the subjects flowing over the surfaces and overflowing
the proper boundaries very often; and also sins in using many woods of
very slightly different tones and textures, which will almost certainly
lose their reciprocal relation in the course of time, and thereby their
decorative effect. The ancient intarsias were made of a small number of
different woods, and the effect was kept simple; pear, white poplar,
oak, walnut, and holly almost exhaust the list; while even Roentgen's
work, in which he used a larger number of woods, including some of those
foreign trees which Dutch commerce made available for him, has suffered
from their changing and fading. I would advise the marqueteur to
disregard most of the many foreign woods now in the market, and content
himself with simple and well-proved effects for the most part, trusting
rather to beauty of design to give distinction to his work than to
variety of colour and startling effects of contrast.
[Illustration: Plate 54.--_Panel from S. Maria in Organo, Verona._
_To face page 126._]
It is the fashion at the present day to exhort the designer to found his
design upon the study of nature, which is right enough if accompanied by
discretion and a feeling for style. In many mouths, however, the
exhortation means that the copying of natural forms is advised, and
often, if one may judge from the examples which one sees around one,
without selection either of subject or form. Now it is obvious that it
is sometimes the beauty of form in natural objects which attracts the
eye, and sometimes the beauty or strangeness of colours, either in their
combination or from the unusual tint. And while the former quality
fits the object for translation into ornament, by means of
simplification and repetition, the latter is more likely to be the
suggestive starting point for the production of something quite
different than a factor in a directly-derived composition. Certain forms
of flowers and leaves are also suitable for ornament expressed in a
certain way, and when this harmony occurs the representation of nature
is satisfactory as ornament; but the reverse is very often shown to be
the case in work of a more modern type, in which the design is based on
the dictum that the copying of natural forms will produce ornament. It
is not the copying of natural forms, but the ordering of the spaces, the
arranging and balancing of line and mass, and the adaptation of means to
ends which produce satisfactory decoration, and in the best Italian
intarsias founded upon freely-growing, natural plants this is well
shown. The observation of natural growth shown in illustrations Nos. 53,
54, and 55 is considerable, but the panels are not so beautiful because
the bay, the pink, or the lily are so well rendered, but because the
pattern of waving lines is so well fitted to the space it has to fill,
and the shapes of the silhouettes are so expressive. In the later French
marquetry we often find an equal or almost equal dexterity in expressing
the natural form, and an almost greater cleverness in adapting the
design to the material; but the Italian work has a fineness of style
shown in a grace of arrangement and of proportioning the ornament to the
space to be filled which is unsurpassable.
Certain remarks made by Mr. Stephen Webb, in a paper read to the Society
of Arts on April 28, 1899, as to the qualities which the designer or
craftsman must possess for successfully producing intarsia, are worth
reproducing here as the sayings of a man who himself has done much
beautiful work of the kind. "Tone harmony, and in a limited degree, the
sense of values, he must certainly cultivate. He must be able to draw a
line or combination of lines which _may_ be ingenious if you like, but
_must_ be delicate and graceful, vigorous withal, and in proper relation
to any masses which he may introduce into his design. He must thoroughly
understand the value of contrast in line and surface form, but these
matters, though a stumbling block to the amateur, are the opportunities
of the competent designer and craftsman. The most charming possibilities
of broken colour lie ready to his hand, to be merely selected by him and
introduced into his design. If the wood be properly selected shading is
rarely necessary, and if it is done at all should be done by an artist.
In the hands of an artist very beautiful effects may be obtained, the
same kind of wood being made to yield quite a number of varying shades
of colour of a low but rich tone. Over-staining and the abuse of shading
are destructive. Ivory has always been a favourite material with workers
in tarsia, and in the hands of an experienced designer very charming
things may be done with it. There is, however, no material suitable for
tarsia which requires so much care and experience in its use. It is
ineffective in light-coloured woods, and in the darker ordinary woods,
such as ebony, stained mahogany, or rosewood, under polish, the contrast
of colour is so great that the ivory must be used very sparingly. The
ivory is sometimes stained in order to bring its colour more into
harmony with a dark wood-ground, but it is never quite satisfactory. The
use of inlay makes the direction from which the light enters the room a
matter of no moment, so long as the light reaches the object decorated."
The effect of intarsia has been sought by various imitative processes,
some of which are indistinguishable from it except by close inspection.
In one of these wax, either in its natural state or tinted with an
addition of powder colour, was used; in another glue mixed with whiting
or plaster, also sometimes tinged, or red lead. On April 7, 1902, a
paper was read at the Royal Institute of British Architects on wax
stoppings of this kind by Mr. Heywood Sumner, in the course of which he
said that the process he himself had used was as follows:--"First trace
the design on the panel of wood to be incised; cut it, either with a V
tool or knife blade fixed in a tool-handle; clear out the larger spaces
with a small gouge, leaving tool-mark roughness in the bottoms for key;
when cut, stop the suction of the wood by several coats of white, hard
polish. For coloured stoppings, resin (as white as can be got), beeswax,
and powdered distemper are the three things needful. The melted wax may
be run into the incisions by means of a small funnel with handle and gas
jet affixed; it is attachable to the nearest gas burner by india-rubber
tubing, so that a regulated heat can be applied to the funnel. When thus
attached and heated, pieces of wax of the required inlay colour are
dropped into the funnel, and soon there will be a run of melted wax
dropping from the end of the funnel-spout, which is easily guided by
means of the wooden handle, and thus the entire panel may be inlaid with
the melted wax. Superfluous surface wax is cleared off with a broad
chisel, so as to make the whole surface flush. The suction of the wood
is stopped by means of white, hard polish, otherwise the hot wax will
enter the grain of the wood and stain it. Incised panels may be filled
successfully with japanner's gold size and powdered distemper colour,
using a palette knife to distribute the slab mixture. A close grain is
the one thing needful in the wood. As to design, that which is best
suited may be compared to a broad sort of engraving." Red lead was also
used sometimes, and in the furniture room at South Kensington there are
several chests and other pieces of furniture which have the incised
design filled in with a mixture of whiting, glue, and linseed oil.
[Illustration: Plate 55.--_Panel from S. Pietro in Casinense, Perugia._
_To face page 130._]
At Hardwick some of the door panels are painted with arabesques in
Indian ink, and varnished (a process also employed on several pieces of
furniture in the South Kensington collection), and even in certain
cases, no doubt under the direction of Bess of Hardwick, engravings have
been stuck on the panels, tinted, surrounded with similar painting, and
then similarly varnished over. The sacristy cupboards at S. Maria delle
Grazie, Milan, called "Lo Scaffale," show paintings of no less an artist
than Luini, the ornamental part of which is intended to simulate tarsia.
For small objects, such as trinket boxes, a marquetry of straw tinted to
different colours was sometimes employed, which, though not very
lasting, in the hands of a worker who possessed taste in colour
sometimes produced pleasing results, a form of work practised both in
Holland and England, and lasting well into the 19th century. The writer
possesses one or two objects decorated by this process which were bought
from the French prisoners taken in the Peninsular War, who provided
themselves with little luxuries by making and selling them. In all these
imitative processes the question of design becomes of the very highest
importance, since the material has neither beauty nor intrinsic value in
itself; and here, even more than in many other forms of manufacture, the
presence and influence of the intelligent designer is most desirable,
and should be paramount.
FOOTNOTES: