Intarsia is one of the types of inlay. It implies decoration wooden surface wooden parts, but of a different texture and tone. It is also called wood mosaic. Carefully fitted inlays create a surprisingly filigree pattern on the surface of the products. Moreover, this depends only on the skill of the specialist. Inlaid masterpieces made not only from valuable types of wood, but also from ordinary ones can look elegant and sophisticated.
From time immemorial
The homeland of intarsia is Ancient Egypt. The reason for the emergence of this type of art among the Egyptians was a shortage of wood. Imported from other countries, this valuable material became worth its weight in gold. Hence the high cost of items decorated with intarsia. Using this technique, sarcophagi made of cedar and cypress were decorated. Boxwood, dogwood and maple plates were used as inlays.
Boxwood, also known as boxwood, is an evergreen tree with very heavy and hard wood. Grows in Asia Minor and Central Asia, Crimea, and the Caucasus.
At first, the technique was dominated by floral patterns. Then they began to become more complex with the introduction of human and animal figures. Subsequently, in inlaid paintings one could see the perspective of streets and cities, scenes from everyday life. As the artist's skill grew, the ornaments became more complex.
Intarsia flourished during the Renaissance. The most complex ornamental forms decorated the wooden surfaces of furniture and walls of that time. The craftsmen who created such masterpieces worked for months, adjusting the thinnest precious plates.
In the mid-15th century, 80 workshops in Florence were working on works of inlay art.
How to do it
The intarsia technique is quite complex. It involves the perfect fit of wooden plates that create an ornament along the edge. The front side of the parts is polished to a perfect condition, but the bottom should remain rough. This allows for maximum grip on the surface. The fitted parts are glued together and placed into a recess on the wooden surface that needs to be decorated. Its thickness should correspond to the thickness of the nested set.
Inlays of this type can be used to decorate houses, utensils, and household items. Using the intarsia technique, entire paintings are created.
Product with intrasia - as a gift
Products decorated using the intarsia technique are a wonderful gift. They can make any interior elegant and sophisticated. When ordering such a product, you can say with confidence that the gift will be unique.
What's special about it?
The peculiarity of intarsia is that the background of a wooden mosaic is wood with all its complexity and versatility of texture. Just as there are no two identical specimens of flora in nature, there are no similar tree cuts. Each has a unique design. The background is not inferior to the decoration in beauty and sophistication. This allows you to create truly unique paintings.
Select wood of different colors. At the base of, for example, a wooden tabletop, a place was cut out, into which suitable pieces of wood of different colors and patterns were then inserted to create a specific design.
The parts that form the pattern are tightly fitted to each other, glued together and inserted into the object to be decorated. The outside of the set is then carefully polished.
Like inlay, intarsia originated in the Ancient East, in Egypt, and reached a very high level in Ancient Greece and in Rome, where ornaments were made from maple, boxwood, holly, ironwood, and dogwood.
But over time, this technique has been simplified. Labor-intensive intarsia was replaced with the marquetry technique. The material for marquetry is natural veneer, that is, single-layer plywood made of wood of various species.
Using the example of a butterfly, we will consider the main stages of manufacturing using the intarsia technique.
First, we print out a drawing diagram according to which we will cut out the details of the image (Fig. 1). For convenience, on each fragment of the diagram we mark the color of the wood and the direction of the grain. Print out the diagram in several copies at once, since each color of wood will need a separate sheet.
We glue pieces of paper with fragments of the diagram onto pieces of wood selected by color (Fig. 2). It is better to do this on a dust-free surface using glue in an aerosol can Spray 3M 75. This glue is intended for short-term fastening of lightweight materials. Allows repeated re-gluing, which is used in silk-screen printing, attaching diagrams, advertisements, etc.
Then we adjust the parts to each other (Fig. 5).
We glue the parts if, according to the conditions of the scheme, they should be on the same level and processed together (Fig. 6).
We smooth out the outer edges of the parts and polish them (Fig. 7).
We glue all the parts together (Fig. 8).
Intarsia (Italian intarsio) is a type of decorative and applied art, inlay done by wood on wood. Intarsia originated in the Ancient East, in Egypt, and reached a very high level in Ancient Greece and Rome, where ornaments were made from maple, boxwood, holly, ironwood, and dogwood.
Recesses are made in the wooden base into which wooden plates differing in color and texture are laid out. The plates forming the pattern are tightly fitted to each other, glued together and inserted into the object to be decorated. The outside of the set is then carefully polished.
Kathy Wise I have always loved animals, despite growing up in the city. As a teenager, she moved with her family to rural Michigan and almost immediately fell in love with the country lifestyle. Katie believes that she inherited her interest in art from her mother, who was also an artist. As a child, she diligently carved animal figures from soap and later from wood, while her mother painted landscapes and portraits. 
Art classes in school and college deepened her interest in art and sculpture. A ceramics class in college, in which Katie added clay animals to pots, led to the creation of many other animal figurines. Soon students began asking her to make something for them. Katie graduated with honors from college with an Associate of Arts degree in commercial art. 
Katie sculpted her first animals from low-fire ceramics and sold them at fairs and exhibitions. Her work featured all breeds of dogs and many other animals, and each figurine was one of a kind. She worked with her mother, who painted her figures. Store owners immediately began asking Katie to sell them these wonderful animals. She soon worked with more than seventy stores, including Mole Hole, America's largest chain of collectible gift stores. 
In 1983, Gene Friedman (CEO of Enesco Corporation) first saw Katie figurines in a Seattle gift shop. The man who brought Precious Moments to the world saw the potential in her work and contacted Katie to begin the first of her many merch lines. She continued to come up with new animal figurines and souvenirs for companies such as Simson, Westland, United Design and Encore Group. Over the years, Katie has created more than a thousand different products in more than forty series, distributed all over the world. 
In the early 90s, Katie created a series of realistic wild animals cast in bronze. At Detroit Center Applied Arts she learned the entire process of casting bronze sculptures, including making molds, wax impressions, casting, final polishing, and creating a patina. Her bronzes have been exhibited in Scottsdale and Michigan. 
The series of bronze wild animals has won several awards, including at the Blue Water International Art Exhibition. Now Katie makes bronze sculptures only by special order. She has been ranked first in the Intarsia and Wood Carving category for the past three years(2006-2008) at the Design in Wood exhibition in San Diego. 
Throughout her artistic career, Katie has created both two- and three-dimensional works in clay, stone, and wood. She designed and carved a life-size carousel horse from wood for her little daughter. Katie has created many panels using wood and other materials. Her art education was very useful for her in working with two-dimensional products. All photographs, backgrounds and graphics on her website and catalogs were designed by Katie herself. 
Katie first began designing intarsia works for her stepfather (Phil MacDonald) over 13 years ago. When his clients asked for a wood inlay in the shape of a special breed of dog or their pet, Phil would ask Kathy to create the design. She started selling them and found that wood carvers really liked them. 
It offers the widest range of sketches of various dog breeds. Thanks to our experience in creating dog figurines, each sketch is individual like no other on the market. She has developed a beginner's intarsia kit that makes it easy to create unique mosaics. 
In the fall of 2004, Cathy's first article appeared in Woodcarver's Workshop (Fox Chapel), which featured her inlaid Boston Terrier with step by step instructions. Since then, her articles have appeared in every issue, and to date there are already 18 of them. 
These articles featured items such as a bird decorated wreath, a tortoiseshell cat, an Arabian charger, a maple leaf frame, floral crowns, a turkey and many others. Katie's work has been featured on the cover five times. She was asked to write a two-part article for Wood Carving Illustrated on how to carve a bulldog bulletin board. 
Her articles have received wonderful reviews and she plans to continue writing for Fox Chapel Co. Katie has already published one book: “Intarsia and Woodworking.” She is currently working on the second one. Kathy accepts special commissions for intarsia work, including murals and large wall hangings. 
The art of inlay has been known to mankind since ancient times. You can use different materials for inlay (ceramics, marble, metal, etc.), but one of the most pliable materials is wood. That's why wood inlay on wood (marquetry And intarsia) is very popular among craftsmen.
Intarsia
Of the two types of inlay on wood, intarsia appeared earlier - it can rightfully be considered the “mother” of marquetry. When performing intarsia, wooden plates of different colors and textures crash into the wooden surface, which allows you to get a complex figured image.
It is believed that intarsia originated in Ancient Egypt, where wood was first used for inlay along with more “noble” materials. But intarsia reached its peak in Italy during the Renaissance. This technique was most often used to decorate church furniture and utensils.
Initially, the predominant patterns were geometric and floral, but gradually the complexity of the work done using the intarsia technique increased. Craftsmen began to make whole paintings made of wood. In order to make them more impressive, they used not only a “play” on the contrast of light and dark wood, but also firing, engraving, and etching of wood.
How is a product made using the intarsia technique? First, a drawing is selected and a sketch is made, which is divided into individual elements (plates) - like a mosaic. These elements are then cut from wood of different colors and textures. The main (background) for the product is solid wood, in which recesses for mosaic pieces are cut out using a special cutting tool.
The front side of the wooden plates is sanded and polished, and the back side is left rough so that it adheres better to the background. Then you need to tightly fit the plates along the edges, glue them and put them into the base array. The product is ready! If the mosaic pieces protrude above the base, this is called relief intarsia. And if they are on the same level with her, this is picturesque intarsia.
Marquetry
Marquetry is simplified technique intarsia. In fact, this is also a mosaic made of wood, but the mosaic pieces are made of thin veneer, assembled together along the edges, like a puzzle, glued and glued onto a flat base.
Marquetry is a less labor-intensive and expensive technique than intarsia, but this does not mean that it is too simple. For making a product using the marquetry technique, it is also important accuracy, patience and artistic taste.
Used for marquetry natural veneer- single-layer facing plywood, made from various types of wood. The thickness of the veneer can vary (from 0.5 to 1.2 mm), and its color and shade depend on the type of wood that was used to make the veneer. In addition, for painting wood they use chemical methods- for example, painting with stain.
As with the intarsia technique, you first need to think over the pattern and draw a drawing (template) on thick paper. Then, using special tools, mosaic pieces are cut out of the veneer and coated with wood glue. Then the “puzzle” needs to be glued onto a paper template-drawing, tightly fitted to each other. Having assembled the mosaic, it is turned over and pasted onto the base - the product to be decorated.
The finished product is covered with paper and left for several hours. put under a press. After two days, the marquetry is polished and covered with several layers of varnish or special mastic. After a day, the mosaic is polished using polishing paste and fabric (cloth, felt, drape).
You can do marquetry a little differently, embedding mosaic elements into a veneer background. The resulting mosaic is secured with paper greased with glue and pasted onto the surface of the product to be decorated. This type of marquetry is closer in technique to its “parent” - intarsia.
Marquetry and intarsia are used to decorate furniture, in the manufacture of original paintings, panels and souvenirs. In order to learn how to work in these techniques, you need not only accuracy and artistic taste. It is very important to know how certain types of wood will “behave” when processed, varnished, etc. But if you try really hard, you can end up getting a real work of art.
In a broad sense, intarsia refers to a type of decorative and applied art, which is a technique of inlaying wood onto wood. In a narrower sense, intarsia is three-dimensional mosaic paintings created by arranging different types of wood, playing with its shades and texture patterns. Let’s talk about the basic principles of this technique and its subtleties using the example of the “Goldfish” project.
What is the essence of technology?
Creating a mosaic picture involves three basic stages:
- Sawing mosaic segments according to a pre-prepared pattern. Depending on the complexity of the project, the number of elements and their sizes, both a machine and a manual jigsaw can be used for these purposes.
- The second stage is grinding the sawn segments and smoothing their angularity. This is done in order to give the wood mosaic volume and depth.
- The final stage is gluing all the pieces into a single picture and fixing it on a plywood or cardboard backing made in the shape of the final product.
What nuances are important to pay attention to?
In general terms, intarsia looks quite simple. But in order for your work made using this technique to turn into a real work of art created with your own hands, it is important to know and be guided by certain subtleties:
- always follow the grain direction indicated in the template;
- use a play of contrasts in wood tones and texture patterns. If you use one color/type of wood, the work will turn out monotonous and boring. Intarsia should include a variety of contrasting wood tones, ranging from white to dark;
- achieve the depth of the mosaic not only by grinding down the angularity of each element, but also by playing with the relief. This is done by lowering or raising some segments in areas where you need to visually work out the volume;
- do not use too thick blanks, especially for projects with many parts - this will negatively affect the quality of cuts and deteriorate appearance mosaics.
How to read intarsia diagrams correctly?
The patterns for intarsia contain a lot of useful information, knowing how to read which you will significantly simplify the work process and improve its quality.
- Each mosaic segment is numbered, which greatly simplifies assembly.
- Arrows indicate the direction of wood fibers for each segment.
- The color of the contours indicates the sequence of cutting lines.
- The -1/4" mark means that the thickness of the indicated segment should be reduced by a quarter of an inch (6 mm).
- The color of the wood is indicated by letter indexing. For example, W (white shade) means that you need to use a segment of light tones, B (black shade) - a dark tone, Y (yellow) - the use of an element with a yellow tint.
How to transfer a template to wood?
There are several options for transferring the intarsia pattern onto a wooden blank:
- using carbon paper;
- using aerosol glue;
- gluing the template onto double-sided tape;
- hand tracing each element cut out of paper.
By trying different approaches, it is easy to choose the optimal template transfer option for yourself.
What files should I use for intarsia?
For cutting small parts, projects with sharp turns, and working with soft or thin wood, #3 jigsaw blades are optimal. They will ensure a neat cut, with a minimum volume of sawn material, due to which small elements the mosaics will fit tightly together.
For cutting hard wood and working with thick workpieces, use #5 or #7 saws. They are also suitable for sawing outer edges that will not be installed next to other elements.
If you want to avoid chipping on the back side, use files with a reverse (reverse) tooth. Blades with so-called “missing tooth”, remove chips more effectively, preventing their accumulation. Over time, the master learns to feel the characteristics of each file and finds his optimal standard.
What types of intarsia are there?
Intarsia is a free technique in which there are no strict rules or canons. Wooden block mosaics can be varied with elements made of glass, stone or plastic. Feel free to liberally use stains, varnishes, oils and dyes to finish and paint your project.
Instead of conventional mosaic elements, you can use complex parts in which one type of wood is carefully cut into another. Such textural breaks give the project additional originality and attractiveness. The texture of each mosaic element can be worked out separately using burning, carving techniques or using a drill.
How to make a pattern for intarsia?
Free drawings and diagrams for intarsia are presented in sufficient quantities on the Internet, especially in its English-language segment. But if you wish, you can create a mosaic template yourself using a picture or photograph. You can use special program, which converts a photo into a diagram. A classic example of such a service is online.rapidresizer.com.
Having minimal skills in working with graphic editors, for example, Adobe Photoshop You can independently convert a photo into an outline drawing, which will become a template for cutting.
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