It is coverage of the entire surface of a board or piece of furniture with veneer, in the form of a skillfully applied design or picture. This is different from Inlay, which is the insertion of thin pieces of veneer, ivory, copper, etc., into a solid base or Intarsia which uses solid pieces in a montage.

The ‘window’ method is the traditional knife cutting technique that has been used for the hand cutting of marquetry pictures for many years, and with it the craft has been raised to great heights of artistry and skill.

This method of marquetry cutting is used in the majority of the pictures produced by the clubs and groups and these general instructions illustrate the basic processes involved. With a wide range of designs it is neither economic nor necessary to produce specific instructions for each picture. These instructions will teach you the technique and general approach to produce any marquetry picture.

In the window method the picture is constructed piece by piece as a sheet of veneer and is stuck to the baseboard in one operation when the picture is complete. Depending on the type of picture, the design is drawn on the background veneers or on an easily cut veneer (called a waster) and as each shape of the design is cut away the resulting hole (or window) is used as a template to cut the correct veneer shape to fill it. Thus progressively the design is built up, piece by piece, each part being cut from and fitted to, those parts already in the design.

The advantages of this method are:

The method leads to accurate fitting since each veneer shape is cut from and fitted to its adjacent veneers already in the picture.

Keeping the picture in veneer form until it is complete allows changes or corrections to be made easily until the cutter is satisfied with the result. This is particularly important when you come to produce your own designs.