Home › Purchasing apartments › Intarsia by Katie Wise: Wildlife, Dogs, Cats, Birds. Intarsia lesson for beginners. Butterfly How to cut a pattern for intarsia

Intarsia by Katie Wise: Wildlife, Dogs, Cats, Birds. Intarsia lesson for beginners. Butterfly How to cut a pattern for intarsia

Intarsia is one of the types of inlay. It involves decorating a wooden surface with the same wooden parts, but with a different texture and tone. It is also called wood mosaic. Carefully fitted inlays create a surprisingly filigree pattern on the surface of the products. Moreover, this depends only on the skill of the specialist. Inlaid masterpieces made not only from valuable types of wood, but also from ordinary ones can look elegant and sophisticated.

From time immemorial

The birthplace of intarsia is Ancient Egypt. The reason for the emergence of this type of art among the Egyptians was a shortage of wood. Imported from other countries, this valuable material became worth its weight in gold. Hence the high cost of items decorated with intarsia. Using this technique, sarcophagi made of cedar and cypress were decorated. Boxwood, dogwood and maple plates were used as inlays.

Boxwood, also known as boxwood, is an evergreen tree with very heavy and hard wood. Grows in Asia Minor and Central Asia, Crimea, and the Caucasus.

At first, the technique was dominated by floral patterns. Then they began to become more complex with the introduction of human and animal figures. Subsequently, in inlaid paintings one could see the perspective of streets and cities, scenes from everyday life. As the artist's skill grew, the ornaments became more complex.

Intarsia flourished during the Renaissance. The most complex ornamental forms decorated the wooden surfaces of furniture and walls of that time. The craftsmen who created such masterpieces worked for months, adjusting the thinnest precious plates.

In the mid-15th century, 80 workshops in Florence were working on works of inlaid art.

How to do it

The intarsia technique is quite complex. It involves the perfect fit of wooden plates that create an ornament along the edge. The front side of the parts is polished to a perfect condition, but the bottom should remain rough. This allows for maximum grip on the surface. The fitted parts are glued together and placed into a recess on the wooden surface that needs to be decorated. Its thickness should correspond to the thickness of the nested set.

Inlays of this type can be used to decorate houses, utensils, and household items. Using the intarsia technique, entire paintings are created.

Product with intrasia - as a gift

Products decorated using the intarsia technique are a wonderful gift. They can make any interior elegant and sophisticated. When ordering such a product, you can say with confidence that the gift will be unique.

What's special about it?

The peculiarity of intarsia is that the background of a wooden mosaic is wood with all its complexity and versatility of texture. Just as there are no two identical specimens of flora in nature, there are no similar tree cuts. Each has a unique design. The background is not inferior to the decoration in beauty and sophistication. This allows you to create truly unique paintings.

To make a mosaic in the Intarsia style, you need veneer - the thinnest top layer of wood. The main skill for creating a mosaic pattern is the correct choice of wood according to color scheme and fiber pattern.

The color of the wood can also be changed by artificially obtaining shades using stain. It is prepared from 50 g of iron sulfate per 1 liter of water. As soon as the solution is ready, veneer is placed in it. Coloring will last from 1 to 3 days. Then the veneer is washed well with running water and dried. After such a procedure, for example, a stained walnut can acquire a color from smoky gray to black, and a birch tree can acquire a color from silvery-greenish to pale blue.

Besides wood different shades, you will also need a cutter for the job. It can be made from a medical scalpel (the shape is shown in the figure on the left); birch or beech wood is used as a handle.

The drawing itself is first done on tracing paper. Then comes the selection of the background for the mosaic. Using paper clips, we attach tracing paper to the selected veneer, at the bottom of which there is carbon paper, and we transfer the entire drawing. Afterwards, carefully cut out all the parts with a cutter, otherwise the veneer will crumble or burst. So we will gradually prepare all our sketches - blanks, selecting the desired color of the veneer. On the reverse side of the composition, each piece prepared for wood intarsia is fastened together using adhesive tape.

Then we cut out the plywood to the size of the design, grease it with wood glue and apply our mosaic with the front side (where the design was), smooth it out, and place it under the press.

Now we need to clean our product from the adhesive tape using sandpaper. Reverse side– has become the front one, this must be taken into account when working.
We cover the entire drawing with furniture varnish 3-4 times. After drying, the surface should be polished with felt.
The mosaic in the Intarsia style is ready.

Intarsia is a figured image, patterns from wood plates, different in texture, color, embedded in wooden surface. Intarsia is performed in the same way as inlay.

Features of intarsia: with intarsia, individual wooden plates that make up the pattern are tightly fitted along the edges, glued and inserted into the array of the object being decorated, where recesses equal to the thickness of the set are pre-selected with a cutting tool. The front side of the records is carefully smoothed and polished. The bottom surface is left rough for better adhesion to the base. With intarsia, solid wood of the product acts as a background for mosaic decorations.

In modern Western clubs for wooden mosaic lovers, the following technique is used: the pieces that make up the picture are usually glued onto a plywood or wooden base, previously outlined along the outer boundaries of the entire image. That is, the background surface is usually absent.

Story

As for the classical technique of wooden mosaic, as well as the related technique of inlay, it is known that it first appeared in Ancient Egypt. It is believed that since Egypt was not rich in timber, in ancient times wood was imported there from other countries and was valued very highly. Therefore, wood with a beautiful texture and bright color began to be used for inlay wooden products along with ivory, metals, mother of pearl and stones. Ease of processing, richness of decorative qualities, strength of connection with the base and organic fusion with the decorated surface gradually led to the fact that wood became the predominant material used for decorating wooden products.

Intarsia reached a high level in Ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient Greek sarcophagi, made of cypress, cedar and yew, were decorated with ornaments of complex plant shapes, using boxwood, maple, ironwood, holly, and dogwood. To change the color of wood, the ancient Greeks specially treated it: soaked it in oil, alum, and boiled it in paint.

Intarsia reached its peak during the Renaissance in Italy. In the middle of the 15th century. In Florence alone, there were more than 80 workshops producing products with mosaic sets. Mosaics were used mainly to decorate church furniture and utensils. The motifs of the decorations were geometric and floral patterns. Dark wood species were used for the background, light wood for the design, and vice versa.

Gradually, ornamental compositions became more complex and multicolored, and perspective images of city streets, cities, scenes from everyday life, and historical events appeared. The story sets used engraving, etching and firing of wood to change its color. The artistic value of such works depended to a large extent on the master’s ability to correctly select the material in terms of texture and color. In some cases, mosaic sets were not inferior to paintings in terms of artistic expressiveness.

From Italy, the intarsia technique penetrated to France, Germany and other countries of Central Europe. In Germany in the 16th and early 17th centuries. It was customary to decorate the interiors of public buildings with mosaic panels. German masters often used engraving and introduced elements of ivory and other materials into the image.

There are several types of mosaic techniques. You will learn about some of them from this article. You can also try making a mosaic on pre-prepared wood using the intarsia technique with your own hands, step by step wizard the class will help you with this.

We create a mosaic on wood with our own hands using the intarsia technique

One of the decorative types is applied arts called intarsia. This is not an easy technique, but once you master it, you can create amazingly unusual things. Products self made serve as an excellent interior decoration. For work, wood of different colors and shades is selected, then cut into thin strips, immediately cutting off all defective areas. The resulting strips are glued together into sheets of the required sizes, from which fragments of the mosaic pattern are subsequently cut out. Then the details of the pattern are tightly adjusted and glued to each other. Upon completion of the work, the front side of the product is thoroughly polished. Using this technique you can make a panel like this.

But in order to create masterpieces, novice craftsmen first of all need to learn how to use a cutter. Hold it easily, like a fountain pen or a pencil, and then things will get going. Now start with an easier task.

Making a wooden butterfly according to a lesson for beginners

This lesson is for beginners. Making such a butterfly will require a little effort, but it will look beautiful on your furniture or on the wall. The butterfly is made using the intarsia technique.

To work you will need:

Pieces of wood of different colors and shades.
Sheets of paper for sketches.
Scissors.
Pencil.
PVA glue.
Pushpins or a can of glue.
A piece of plywood.
Jigsaw.
Emery with a wheel for polishing the product.

1)Especially for beginners, a simple ready-made diagram is included. The arrows on it indicate the direction of the wood fibers; all that remains is to apply the shades of the intended pattern, according to the prepared material. Print out the pictures, several copies at once, from which you will cut out a pattern for each part separately.

2) Cut out patterns from paper and glue them to the wood according to the color and direction of the grain (before starting work, you should thoroughly clean the boards from dust), then start cutting out the parts. Try to cut carefully so that the pieces fit perfectly together. The slightest inaccuracy can ultimately lead to a larger error.

3) Glue all the parts that are on the same level according to the diagram together and process them at the same time.

4)Smooth the outer edges, polish the parts and glue them together. Then cut out the backing from a piece of plywood and glue the finished butterfly onto it.

5) Check the surface of the product to ensure that there are no flaws left on it, if necessary, polish it again and varnish it. The butterfly is ready.

Block mosaic.

The method of making block mosaics requires some effort if everything is done by hand. But now this process has been mechanized, and products made using this technique are becoming increasingly popular.

Before starting work, first draw a sketch. Then blocks are assembled from bars or plates of wood of different shades, gluing them together according to a given pattern. After which, the finished bars are cut into fragments across the fibers. Thus, the same pattern is indicated on the end part of the blocks. Finished blocks are glued to the surface of a wooden substrate or finished products; they can also be inserted into recesses to create a pattern.

Marquetry.

Exists special kind mosaics like wood inlay. Initially, inlay was made by gluing fragments of thin plywood of various types of trees. A little later, instead of plywood, various materials began to be used - ivory, metal, stones, etc. The pattern was created by cutting figures into a wooden surface. Products made using this technique look very impressive.

Craftsmen, in order to create a more picturesque effect, were no longer satisfied with the natural shades of wood and began to use various wood processing techniques - etching, firing, painting in the desired color. The patterns have become more vibrant and picturesque.

Another type of applied art is wood carving. If you master the basic techniques for performing certain elements, then carving will seem much easier to you than it seemed at first glance. Carved paintings, furniture and other interior items can be a good decoration; you can make interior decoration walls, exterior decoration of the house - openwork lace made of wood can turn your house into a mansion, as in this photo.

Video on the topic of the article

Intarsia is the process of inlaying wood onto wood. The technology is such that in the recesses of the wooden base, inlays are also made of wood, which differ from the base in texture and color. Quite often, intarsia is called inlay. This is not a mistake, although the latter concept implies a more expanded list of materials used as tabs.

The implementation of the intarsia technique involves a tight fit of individual wooden plates that make up the pattern along the edges. Then they are glued together and placed into a pre-prepared recess in the surface of the product, equal to the thickness of the set. The front side of the plates is carefully smoothed and polished, and the bottom part is left rough for better adhesion to the base.

From history. Intarsia first appeared in Ancient Egypt. The development of this type of decoration was due to the lack of abundant forest plantations; as a result, wood was imported from other countries and was expensive. Therefore, wood began to be used along with precious and semi-precious stones and ivory. Due to the ease of processing, the richness of decorative effects, the strength of the connection with the base and the organic fusion with the surface of the product, wood gradually began to prevail over other materials used by craftsmen when decorating wooden products.

Intarsia reached a high level in Ancient Rome and Greece. Sarcophagi, made of cedar, yew and cypress, were decorated with ornaments of complex shapes using boxwood, maple, ironwood, holly and dogwood. To change the color of the wood, it was subjected to special treatment: impregnation with oil or alum, boiling in paint.

The greatest flowering of intarsia occurred during the Renaissance in Italy. Thus, in the middle of the 15th century, at least 80 workshops operated in Florence, producing products with mosaic decorations. The main motifs are floral and geometric patterns. Dark wood species were used as a background, and light wood species were used for the design, or vice versa.

Over time, ornamental compositions became more complex, became multicolored, and perspective images of streets, cities, some scenes from everyday human life, and historical events appeared. For story sets, engraving, etching, and firing of wood were used to change its color.

Further, intarsia began to be used in France, Germany and other countries of Central Europe. Thus, in Germany in the period of the 16th - early 17th centuries, the interiors of public buildings were decorated with mosaic panels. The craftsmen quite often used engraving; elements made of ivory and other materials were included in the image.

The peculiarity of intarsia is that the wood of the product acts as a background for mosaic decorations. Due to the complexity and labor-intensive nature of the inlay-intarsion technique, it was used purely for decorating expensive products that were made from valuable wood species. The finishing of all surfaces was given special attention. The background was never inferior in beauty to the decoration. Products decorated with intarsia belonged to the richest people.

Select wood of different colors. At the base of, for example, a wooden tabletop, a place was cut out, into which suitable pieces of wood of different colors and patterns were then inserted to create a specific design.

The parts that form the pattern are tightly fitted to each other, glued together and inserted into the object to be decorated. The outside of the set is then carefully polished.

Like inlay, intarsia originated in Ancient East, in Egypt, and reached a very high level in Ancient Greece and Rome, where ornaments were made from maple, boxwood, holly, ironwood, and dogwood.

But over time, this technique has been simplified. Labor-intensive intarsia was replaced with the marquetry technique. The material for marquetry is natural veneer, that is, single-layer plywood made of wood of various species.

Using the example of a butterfly, we will consider the main stages of manufacturing using the intarsia technique.

First, we print out a drawing diagram according to which we will cut out the details of the image (Fig. 1). For convenience, on each fragment of the diagram we mark the color of the wood and the direction of the grain. Print out the diagram in several copies at once, since each color of wood will need a separate sheet.

We paste pieces of paper with fragments of the diagram onto pieces of wood selected by color (Fig. 2). It is better to do this on a dust-free surface using glue in an aerosol can Spray 3M 75. This glue is intended for short-term fastening of lightweight materials. Allows repeated re-gluing, which is used in silk-screen printing, attaching diagrams, advertisements, etc.