French Marquetry Inlaid Corner Cabinet with Marble Top

• Inlay - Decorative patterns inserted into the main body of a piece of furniture, generally in wood of contrasting colour and grain, though brass, ivory, ebony, shell and sometimes horn have been used. Inlay may consist of a panel of well figured timber inset into a cabinet door front, geometric patterns, or complex and stylized designs of flowers, swags of foliage, fruits and other motifs. As a general rule, in pieces where the carcase is constructed in the solid, the inlay is relatively simple such as stringing, cross banding and herringbone banding. Where more elaborate and decorative work was required veneer was used. Inlay has been fashionable from at least the latter half of the 17th century, when a variety of elaborate forms were developed
• Marquetry - In marquetry inlay, contrasting woods, and other materials such as ivory, shell and metal are inlaid either as panels or in a single continuous sheet over the surface of the piece. The design may be straightforward, such as a shell pattern or a basket of flowers, or it may be infinitely complex, with swirling tendrils of leaves, flowers and foliage, such as one finds, for example, in the "seaweed" patterns on longcase clocks of the William and Mary and Queen Anne periods.
• Veneers - Veneers are thin sheets of well-figured timber that are glued under pressure to the surface of a cheaper timber for decorative effect, and then used in the making of carcase furniture.
  
  Early veneers were saw-cut so were relatively thick, (up to 2 mm) but is was realised that saw cutting was wasteful, as timber to the equivilent of the thickness of the saw was lot on each cut.
  
  A more efficient method was devised to slice the timber, either horizontally with a knife, or in a rotary lathe.
  
  Flame veneer, commonly found in mahogany or cedar furniture, is cut from the junction of the branches and main trunk. So-called fiddleback veneers, where the grain is crossed by a series of pronounced darker lines, is usually cut from the outer sections of the tree trunk.
  
  During the 17th and 18th centuries, and in much of the walnut marquetry furniture made during the latter part of the 19th century, the veneer was laid in quarters, each of the same grain, so that one half of the surface was the mirror image of the other.
  
  The use of veneer allows many other decorative effects to be employed, including stringing, feather banding, cross banding, and inlaid decorative panels in the piece. The carcase over which veneer is laid is usually of cheaper timber such as pine, oak or, sometimes in Australia during the first half of the 19th century, red cedar.
  
  The important thing to remember about veneers is that prior to about 1850 they were cut by hand, and were consequently quite thick - ranging up to about 2mm deep.
  
  From the mid-19th century veneers were cut by machines and were almost wafer-thin. This is a critical point when trying to judge the approximate age of veneered furniture.
• Mahogany - Mahogany is a dense, close grained red-coloured timber from the West Indies and Central America. It was first imported into Europe in the the early 18th century and its use continued through the 19th century. It was popular for furniture making because of its strength, the wide boards available, the distinctive grain on some boards, termed flame mahogany and the rich warm colour of the timber when it was polished.. The "flame" was produced where a limb grew out from the trunk of the tree, and this timber was usually sliced into veneers for feature panels on doors, backs and cornices.
  
  Some terms used to describe mahogany relate to the country from which it originally came, such as "Cuban" mahogany, "Honduras" mahogany etc. However unless the wood has been tested the names assigned are more a selling feature, rather than a true indication of the timber's origin.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• corner cabinets, free standing
  • French 25
  • mahogany 94