Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/360

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Intarsia and Inlaid Wood-work.

woods, by scorching it with fire, or by staining it with chemical solutions. In the book desks or the choir at the Certosa or Charterhouse of Pavia, the effect of shading is got in a direct but somewhat imperfect way by laying strips of different coloured woods side by side. Each flower or leaf was probably built up of tolerably thick pieces of wood glued together in position, so that they could be sliced off in veneers and yield several flowers or leaves from the same block, much in the way of Tunbridge Wells ware, though the Italian specimens are, I believe, always cut with the grain and not across it. The designs thus produced are very effective at a short distance, but the method is, of course, suitable only to bold and simple conventional patterns.

The panels of the high screen or back to the stalls at the same church afford an

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