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Furniture Finishing

Marquetry designs come in oval, circular and rectangular patterns set in an equally thin veneer of mahogany, walnut or satinwood and often framed in strips of contrasting hue. Many of the pieces making up the picture are extremely minute in size, and in order to obtain the desired lights and shades, a vast number of woods are employed since few are artificially stained, but actually grow in the particular coloring. The design is trimmed down to the edge of the frame and traced on the surface of the panel which is chiseled or gouged out and coated with glue to receive it snugly. When the blocks and clamps are removed, any paper coating is washed off, after which it is sanded to uniform smoothness and finished natural.

Imitation marquetry, or perhaps rather marquetry effects, are obtainable in various ways. One is to sandblast over a metal stencil plate in such a way that the design appears on the bare wood in roughened form; then when the stain is applied the color shows slightly darker in the pattern than on the remainder of the surface. The process may be reversed "whereby all of the panel but the design is sandblasted. Again the marquetry may be closely imitated by decalcomania transfers or by spraying lacquer or japan color through a stencil plate, using pastel shades in each case, and touching up by hand when dry. Finally a special bleaching lacquer may be procured and sprayed on the bare wood through a template or metal stencil; the color of the stain and filler coats next applied will not "take" over the pattern produced by the lacquer, leaving it light against a background of dark, or vice versa, as desired.


Overlays, Frets and Grilles


WHERE inlay and marquetry are set into the veneer so as to lie flush with it, an overlay, as the name would indicate, is set upon it and so raised above it. Stained overlays consist of selected hardwoods of choice figure such as crotch and fiddle back mahogany, curly, blister or birdseye maple, pencil stripe, stump and burl walnut, redwood burl, satinwood, sycamore or Mexican cedar. They are built up with plywood to various thicknesses, sometimes set in a lighter or darker moulded frame of geometrical or broken curve shape stained a harmonizing color. A recessed overlay, which might be termed "underlay," is produced by cutting out the center of the panel, framing the edge and placing the overlay at the back.