In the latter part of the 17th century they often made the ground of a cabinet or panelling of one wood and the mouldings which defined the panels and the carved ornaments added of another, or even of two others; the effect is not quite happy. Tortoiseshell also appears, and metal and coloured stones; the striving after what they thought to be greater artistry soon caused them to outstep more and more the proper limits of the art, and brought about decadence. The South German bride chests of the century before are decorated a good deal with inlays, Peter Flotner's designs often serving as patterns; a little green and red appear mixed with the commoner colours. The architectural forms project, and would form a tolerable design by themselves, though scarcely suitable to the object to which they are applied. In German work the cabinets are often of the most elaborate architectural design, like the façade of a palace, made of ebony, or occasionally even of ivory, and inlaid with ivory, silver, gold and enamels or precious stones. Augsburg was the most celebrated place for such work. The joiner, the woodcarver, the lapidary, and the goldsmith all worked together on such things. In the North of Germany tarsia was principally used on chests, cabinets, seats, and smaller objects of furniture; in South Germany, where the Italian influence was stronger, it was much used in wall-panelling and the panels of doors. The little castle of Völthurn, near Brixen, built by the bishop of that town in 1580-85 and decorated by Brixener artists and joiners (now belonging to Prince Lichtenstein), shows "panelled walls with architectural features, columns, cornices, and friezes, with gabled doorways with columns and pediments, decorated with very delicate intarsias, foliage ornaments, flowers, and fruit, a work which modern Brixener joiners could with difficulty understand"; so says Von Falke. Ebony and ivory work came to Germany in the latter half of the 16th century, when Augsburg and Nuremberg soon exported their productions of this sort to all the world, and with this commercial production the use of male and female designs begins, black on white and white on black. The latter is the better and more valued. Hans Schieferstein's cabinet, now at Dresden, a work of this period, has an ingenious use of this mode of inlay. It is made of ebony or veneered with that wood, and has inlays of brown cypress and of ivory. The panel on the inside of the door is of the same design as that on the outside, but what was white becomes brown, what was brown is black, and the black becomes white.
Plate 42.—Lower panel of door, 1564—Tyrolese.
In the Musée Cluny is a wire drawing bench made in 1565 for Augustus I., Elector of Saxony, who was an amateur craftsman. The two longitudinal surfaces are covered with a double frieze of marquetry, one side representing a satirical tournament between the Papacy and Lutheranism, and the other a carousal of wild men. In front one sees the marqueteur with his tools doing his work, below which he has placed his monogram, L—D., accompanied by a cup.
In the Museum at Leipzig is a very fine cabinet, with many drawers within, elaborately inlaid with arabesques on a light ground, with a few architectural forms in ebony projecting. It is Tyrolese work of the beginning of the 17th century, and is a typical example. To the few names of German intarsiatori may be added those of Isaac Kiening, of Frissen, and Sixtus Loblein, of Landshut.
In the lower Rhine and in Holland tarsia was used for great and small chests, sideboards and doors with rich gable crownings, with good drawing of flowers, and sprigs of leaves with birds and beasts among them, the ground being generally light. The doors ordered by the Swedish Chamberlain, Axel Oxenstiern, now in the drinking-room of the King's Castle of Ulriksdal, near Stockholm, are said by Von Falke to be the finest examples extant of this kind of work, and to have been made in the 17th century by a Dutch craftsman. The best period in Holland was the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. In the work of this period the handling is broad, and the composition often a little over-full, but the many different woods which Dutch commerce made available seduced the marqueteurs into too pictorial a treatment in point of colour. Their reputation was so great that Colbert engaged two Dutch marqueteurs, Pierre Gole and Vordt, for the Gobelins at the beginning of the 17th century, and Jean Macé also learnt the craft by a long stay in Holland. Here, as well as in France and Italy, rich chairs were commonly decorated with marquetry, and in William and Mary's reign such things became the fashion in England. The design employed tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds, etc., all in gay colours; ivory and mother-of-pearl were used occasionally for salient points, such as eyes. Examples of the use and misuse of these materials may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington.
Plate 43.—Top of card table in the Drawing-room, Roehampton House. Dutch, 18th Century.