In Italy around the 13th century, this “kind of mosaic made of wood” began to be used more widely, and in the 1500s many artists made extensive use of marquetry as a creative technique. The painters, at the request of the patrons, gave the inlayers a painted cartoon to reproduce using the carving technique; other times it happened that the painters’ clients were the inlayers themselves, who asked for drawings to base their works on.
In the 1500s, art writers imposed a great distinction between the “major arts” and the “minor arts.” In that hierarchy among the arts, wooden marquetry, like ceramics, tapestries, and glass, was relegated to the “minor arts,” so much so that the painter-architect Giorgio Vasari in 1568 defined inlaying as a “mediocre substitute for painting.” Even Galileo Galilei considered it a “jumble of little pieces of wood of different colors.”
However, even if seen with a critical eye, in the 1500s marquetry was one of the opportunities to experiment with perspective, recently discovered. In marquetry, in fact, the illusion of fullness and emptiness and of closeness and distance of objects was nothing more than the elaboration and development of perspective drawings made with painting techniques.
The artists, by joining pieces of wood with different shades and hues, created faux cabinets containing still lifes, illusory windows that hinted at frames and perspective views, fake niches housing saints, religious figures, and allegorical figures; trompe l’oeil, although to a lesser extent, also completed the range of produced marquetry.
Certainly, this art had its charm, and even today, after 4 centuries, marquetry is a highly used technique. Especially in Sorrento. In the homeland of Torquato Tasso, artist-craftsmen continue to produce these unique and precious objects, intended primarily for an international market, working them according to ancient methods. The Sorrentine carvers, with patience, passion, and inventiveness, using various types of wood, manage to obtain figurative panels and furnishings with absolutely unexpected chromatic and perspective effects.
The marquetry produced today in Sorrento is not the same as in past centuries: the artisans, very attentive to market demands, have shifted their production into the field of design and pure objects. Even if the designs and patterns inlaid are the same as always: the classic “floral ornaments,” the Sorrentine landscapes, and typical local figures. Jewelry boxes and chests, trunks and frames, lamps, wardrobes, and small tables are all handcrafted objects, following however two different manufacturing lines: one that favors the preservation of the wood in its natural, matte state, as requested by the European market; another that provides finishing the objects with polyester to make the products shiny, as preferred by American buyers. The latter are particularly fond of Sorrento marquetry. Music boxes, the famous jewelry boxes with carillons produced in Switzerland or Japan, the Americans simply call “Sorrento,” and the most requested music is naturally “Torna a Surriento.”
The woods used for the work are still those of the past: Beech and Rosewood, Horse Chestnut and Orange, Tulipwood, Maple, Pear, Ebony, and Paduka; and even the shades and shadow plays are obtained, as before, by immersing each single piece of wood in boiling sand; the thousand hues of color are obtained instead by industrial methods to ensure a high-quality standard and reduce production times. But there are still some “purists” who, at the expense of time, prefer boiling the strips in mixtures of herbs and essences, according to a traditional practice that today is certainly uneconomical. The fiber and texture of the wood have a marked graphic component, while the type of cut practiced by the artisan—parallel, transverse, or normal—together with the vegetable compounds used for coloring, give an almost infinite quantity of nuances.
The artist carvers are always on the hunt for woods with particular grains and “unusual” tones. For example, the sudden release of dioxin from the Icmesa plants a few years ago that caused an environmental disaster in the Seveso area changed the color of the tree trunks throughout that territory, giving the wood tones that cannot be reproduced in nature with absolutely extraordinary shades. An artist from Sorrento managed to obtain some of that wood and today uses it to produce truly unique pieces.
For almost two centuries, inlaying has been one of the main economic activities of the Sorrentine Peninsula. Master carvers pass down their art from father to son, and to protect a product that involves about 100 artisan workshops and over 600 people, the Sorrentine Inlay Artisans Union was born; among the association’s initiatives is the creation of the Permanent Marquetry Exhibition, organized in the laboratories of the “Francesco Grandi” Art Institute located inside the Cloister of San Francesco. At the school, it is possible to attend courses to learn the art of inlaying, even if workshop work remains the best method to grasp all the “secrets” of the craft. In any case, the “inlaying technique” course is the oldest and most prestigious of the school: consider that the Furniture and Marquetry section already existed at the end of the 1800s.
In Sorrento, many famous inlayers are also cabinetmakers and restorers. However, each has their specific production field: there are those who are experts in creating game tables and frames, and those specializing in mosaics or boxes. Portraits and reproductions of famous paintings are also highly requested subjects, especially from the Japanese market. On the other hand, the artisans who still produce the famous boxes with the “secret,” olive wood jewelry boxes with a traditional and intricate system that hides the small lock, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
