Wood Inlay

Wood inlay is one of the most traditional working techniques of furniture. The inlay technique consists in cutting with great precision woods of different colors and assembling them together to obtain a design (for example geometric or floral). The inlay can be made even with a unique type of wood, by using only the direction of the grain in order to create a decorative effect. The inlay technique is a Made in Italy speciality: we are masters in this field for six centuries.

Inlays can be used in many ways: the simplest solution is to put straight lines of contrasting wood on flat surfaces. In technical jargon, they are often called “threads” and can be more or less complex.

Another solution to use the inlay technique is to make geometric designs. Some layouts have a catchy effect and are widely used (such as the star-shape inlay or the herringbone-layout inlay), others are more particular and therefore less used.

Floral inlay is a widely used decorating style. It can be used to represent flowers, branches and leaves more or less stylized by using small wooden elements. This is an extremely refined and elegant kind of inlay.

Moreover, there are furnitures on which the wooden inlay is so rich that it becomes an extremely identifying feature. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Italy lived the great master Giuseppe Maggiolini who used the technique of inlay with such mastery to create his own style, the so-called “Maggiolini Style“. On Maggiolini’s furniture every detail was inlaid: not only the main surfaces such as the top, the sides, the fronts, but also the thickness of the frames, the feet, the small side panels were completely covered with inlays. It’s such a pleasure to see that “Maggiolini style” furnitures are very popular, especially among young couples.

Obviously, the inlay technique must be realized with different kinds of wood. Usually the starting point is walnut or cherry wood, in which are inserted decorations made of maple wood, bois de rose, zebrano and other woods. These woods are generally easy to recognize: maple has a typically yellow and uniform color; bois de rose is a wood obtained from the rose trunk, it is very expensive and therefore it is used only for very small details. Bois de rose can be recognized by its pink colour, white veined; zebrano is a very particular wood, characterized by a grain that turns from a very dark colour to a very light one.