In Italy around the 13th century, this “sort of mosaic made of wood” began to be widely used, 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 the patrons of the painters were the inlayers themselves, who, to create their works, asked for designs to base themselves on.
In the ‘500s, art writers imposed a great discrimination between “major arts” and “minor arts.” In that hierarchy among the arts, wooden marquetry, like ceramics, tapestries, and glass, were relegated among the “minor arts,” so much so that the painter-architect Giorgio Vasari in 1568 defined intarsia as a “mediocre surrogate of painting.” Even Galileo Galilei considered it a “jumble of small differently colored pieces of wood.”
However, even if viewed critically, in the ‘500s marquetry was one of the opportunities to experiment with perspective, recently discovered. In marquetry, in fact, the illusion of fullness and emptiness and the proximity and distance of objects were nothing but the elaboration and development of perspective drawings made with painting techniques.
The artists, by joining pieces of wood with different tones and shades, created false cabinets with still lifes inside, illusory windows that allowed glimpses of framed views and perspectives, fake niches housing saints, religious figures, and allegorical figures; trompe l’oeil, although to a lesser extent, completed the range of marquetry produced.
Certainly, this art had its charm, and even today, after 4 centuries, marquetry is a widely used technique. Especially in Sorrento. In the homeland of Torquato Tasso, artist-craftsmen continue to produce these unique and precious objects, destined mainly for a foreign market, working them according to ancient methods. The Sorrentine inlayers, with patience, passion, and inventiveness, using different types of wood, manage to obtain figurative panels and pieces of furniture with absolutely unexpected chromatic and perspective effects.
However, the marquetry produced today in Sorrento is not the same as that of past centuries: the craftsmen, very attentive to market demands, have shifted their production into the field of design and pure objects. Even if the designs and fantasies inlaid are the same as always: the classic “floral ornaments,” Sorrentine landscapes, and typical local figures. Caskets and boxes, chests and frames, lamps, cabinets, and small tables are all handcrafted objects, following two different processing lines: one that favors the preservation of the wood in its natural, matte state, as required by the European market; another that instead involves finishing the objects with polyester, to make the products shiny, as preferred by American buyers. The latter are particularly fond of Sorrento’s marquetry. The music boxes, the very famous jewelry boxes with carillons produced in Switzerland or Japan, Americans simply call them “Sorrento,” and the most requested music is naturally “Torna a Surriento.”
The woods used for the work are still those of old: 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 color tones are instead achieved with 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 graphical component, while the type of cut practiced by the craftsman—parallel, transverse, or normal—together with the plant compounds used for coloring, provide a truly infinite amount of nuances.
The artist inlayers are always on the lookout for woods with particular grain patterns and “unprecedented” tones. For example, the sudden release of dioxin from the Icmesa plants that a few years ago 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 acquire some of those woods and today uses them to produce truly unique pieces.
For almost two centuries, intarsia has been one of the major economic activities of the Sorrentine Peninsula. Master carvers pass down their art from father to son, and to protect a product involving about 100 artisan workshops and over 600 people, the Sorrentine Intarsia Craftsmen Union was founded; among the association’s initiatives is the creation of the Permanent Intarsia Exhibition, organized within the workshops of the “Francesco Grandi” Art Institute located inside the San Francesco Cloister. At the school, it is possible to follow courses to learn the art of intarsia, although workshop work remains the best method to grasp all the “secrets” of the trade. In any case, the “intarsia technique” course is the oldest and most prestigious at the school: consider that the Furniture and Marquetry section already existed at the end of the 1800s.
In Sorrento, many famous inlayers work, and almost all are also cabinetmakers and restorers. However, each has their specific field of production: some are experts in creating gaming tables and frames, others specialize in mosaics or boxes. Portraits and reproductions of famous paintings are also very much in demand, especially from the Japanese market. On the other hand, the artisans who still produce the famous boxes with the “secret,” wooden jewelry boxes made of olive wood with a traditional and complicated system hiding the small lock, can be counted on the fingers.
