Finding things
I found a tray in a charity shop constructed from a marquetry design. It was too nice to not buy and someone had clearly spent a lot of time on it. I am finding that time is something I am short of and fitting in significant periods of making anything is hard but I am thinking about the project a lot as I do other things.
I bought some nice veneers from a craft shop and the man told me that a lot of the materials they sell are the off cuts from car manufacture. Particularly one which came from jaguar- a manmade veneer that he called snake eye.
Hot Chip
The electo pop-ish band Hot chip have an intriguing cover to their latest single. It looks like a lumpy marquetry mass. Their album covers have been good in the past so I was pleased to see this and wonder where it came from?
Working with others
Working in schools has given me reason to think how this project could be shared with young people. Sharp knives and small children not being a great combination, other ways of applying the basic principles of working with veneer are possible.
The work I have done using vinyl sheets could be an ideal way of producing collaborative, community and education work. The direction of the project might focus on this as I look ahead and balance working alone with others. At a point where I felt I needed to change my way of working this seems like a productive and worthwhile thing to focus on. In conjunction with the National Marquetry exhibition this may work well, better in fact than simply trying to present my own work in some way.
Vinyl Marquetry
I've tried to incorporate other materials into my work and plastic is one that isn't entirely alien to marquetry.
'Marquetry' by Pierre Raymond is a comprehensive book that charts the history, development, tools and techniques of the craft. It covers many angles and has been really useful to me over the past few months.
Plastic gets a mention alongside natural materials, whale bone, ivory, mother of pearl, coral as well as many metals.
Using the figure of the grain from a roll of vinyl 'veneer' (sticky back plastic with a wood effect) I have made a picture. My avoidance of pictorial work so far has been evident so making a 'proper' picture from a synthetic material has a hint of irony. As well as the materials being off the shelf at Wilkinsons.
Giving the sheets a firm backing I have cut the veneers into one another as normal. One was an imitation Beech design and the other a Walnut burr – both had surprisingly interesting qualities to their make up.
