Genesis of Marquetry Continued

When marquetry spread beyond the land of the pharaohs it traveled up the Mediterranean coast as far as Greece where it was called 'cerostrata'. The woods used by the Greeks were oak, cypress, willow, ebony, yew, cedar and and horn. About 700 B.C. Glaucus of Chios invented the process by which various metals could be inlaid and welded together. But it was in Persia during the Achaemenid dynasty (550-333 BC) that a new artistic style emerged. The appearance of this marquetry was rather arabesque and began a transitional influence to orientalism. What made this distinctly Persian was that it was a blend of Egyptian, Greek and Babylonian art. It is relative to the emergence of marquetry in the East, that is to say India and China, that Alexander the Great and his conquest of the Persian Empire had some part in disseminating the craft into these conquered lands.

The Roman writer and architect, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, in his Ten Books of Architecture (80-70 BC) mentions 'inlaid' three times in discribing the embellishment of temples and houses. There is also Gaius Plinius Secundus who says when describing the reason for veneering was a "requirement of luxury which displays itself in covering one tree with another, and bestowing upon the more common woods a bark of higher price. In order to make a single tree sell many times over, laminæ of veneer have been devised; but that was not thought sufficient--the horns of animals must next be stained of different colours, and their teeth cut into sections, in order to decorate wood with ivory, and, at a later period, to veneer it all over. Then, after all this, man must go and seek his materials in the sea as well! For this purpose he has learned to cut tortoise-shell into sections." - Naturalis Historia, Book XVI, Chapter 84.