50 Shades of Veneer

QUESTION: At several antiques shows I’ve attended recently, I noticed some beautifully decorated veneered boxes from the 18th century. At one of them, I also saw a hall table with a top decorated with a floral marquetry bouquet.  I know nothing about how veneering is done, nor do I know how it originated. What can you tell me about this intricate work?

ANSWER: Today, the art of veneered marquetry and veneer decoration is almost non-existent. But back in the 17th,18th and early 19th centuries, it was all the rage.

Early furniture makers recognized and appreciated beautiful woods and wood grains for their beauty. Veneering, the process of gluing thinly cut layers of precious wood to surfaces of less exotic wood, goes back to ancient times and became popular during the Renaissance, when inlay designs were common forms of furniture decoration.

But there was a problem early on with cutting large enough slabs of wood to the desired thinness in order to cover entire surfaces with single sheets of the more precious wood. So cabinetmakers cut small pieces of wood and glued them to the carcass of a piece of furniture in patterns and designs that took advantage of the beauty of the wood grain and variations in color.

By the 17th century, veneering became an art, and the decorative use of thin sheets of wood could be found on many examples of European furniture. The French were the style-setters in marquetry inlay, and British and other European craftsmen soon followed suit.

There were two advantages to using veneers. The first reduced the cost of a piece of furniture or a box by applying an exotic and expensive wood to a less expensive domestic wood. The second advantage was that the tensile strength of the surface of a piece could be increased many times when the cabinetmaker laid a veneer cross grain to the under piece of wood. The layer of glue between the two surfaces also added to the strength of the finished piece.

The aesthetic advantages of the use of veneers in the decoration of cabinetry  increased, also. The cabinetmakers, using thinly cut sheets of the same piece of wood, could repeat the grainings and markings in order to form interesting patterns. This use of the natural design in wood required artistry as well as craftsmanship. By using veneers judiciously, cabinetmakers could inlay designs and decorations of different kinds and colors of wood, thus producing interesting motifs and styles.

Before the 19th century, specially trained veneer cutters, skilled in slicing the layers of expensive wood to uniform thickness, cut veneers by hand. They then sold these sheets to furniture makers and box makers who used them in decorating the many kinds and styles of decorative furniture and boxes that developed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

At the beginning of the19th century a steam-driven saw, registered in London, that made it cheaper, faster, and easier to cut large, thin, uniform slices of wood to be used for veneers. After the invention of the special saw, wood could be cut in many different ways to take advantage of the variations in grainings.



The different designs that could be obtained in veneered wood depended on the type of wood used and the way in which the log was cut. The earliest methods of cutting veneers by hand produced only vertically cut grains. This vertical slicing achieved a pattern which was circular and was known as "oystering." Other types of graining commonly used in the 19th century were "crotch," cut from the area of the tree where two limbs fork out, the "burl," a growth on the tree trunk and a particularly attractive gnarled design, and "bird's-eye," which was formed by the deep growth of buds most commonly found on the maple tree. Many other patterns could be obtained by the expert cutting of the wood in different cross sections and the employment of the saw in cutting circular sections around the log.

Woods often used in producing veneers were chestnut, poplar, walnut, elm, birch, rosewood, ebony, satinwood, sandalwood, sycamore, box, yew, olive, pear, teak, tulipwood, laurel, and many other similar exotic woods. Mahogany was and still is the most popular veneer wood. It was strong and hard and had figurations in the various cuts of its grain that were unmatchable for their beauty. Mahogany also takes a high polish extremely well.

A large variety of boxes were made of veneered wood in the 19th century. British box makers, especially, produced a great many veneered boxes. Often, they made elaborate boxes to protect valuables against damage, and more often, theft. Sometimes, they made elegant boxes simply as a means of displaying the contents to its best advantage.


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Black as Jet

QUESTION: I recently purchased a beautiful shiny black brooch that’s made of a very hard material, almost like stone. I’ve never seen anything like it. Can you tell me what it’s made of and something about it?

ANSWER: It looks like you’ve discovered a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry. One of the primary materials used to make pieces like your brooch was jet, a hard type of coal found along the Yorkshire coast of England.

On December 14, 1861, Queen  Victoria woke to find that her beloved husband, Albert, had died in his sleep of typhoid. Deeply distressed, Victoria went into full mourning and the England, out of respect and love for her, followed her example. An atmosphere of grief permeated English society. It was customary during this time for a widow to remain in full mourning for two years, and then half mourning for six months, but Queen Victoria never stopped grieving.

During the last half of the 19th century in the United States, especially after the Civil War, death was rampant and grief overshadowed both the North and South. More than a million lives were lost. When the war officially ended on April 9, 1865, a crippled nation already reeling  from the devastation of war became shrouded with grief.

Symbolic images of sorrow, love and devotion were the custom at the time. Men and women wore carved and molded pieces of mourning jewelry, an acceptable behavior during the  bereavement period. But by the 1890s, fashion and attitude had lightened, and people tucked the mementos of grief away for posterity.

In the early 1860s, the material of choice for black jewelry was jet, a hard type of lignite coal.  The best jet, found along the rocky Yorkshire shoreline, had a compact mineral structure making it strong enough to withstand carving and turning on a lathe. Jet also retained a high polish and resisted fading. As a result, an industry grew up around the mining and fabrication of jet during the mid-19th century in the small coastal village of Whitby.

At one time, the natural supply of jet was so plentiful that people could find substantial chunks of the shiny black substance washed up along the shore. Eventually however, the supply of true jet dwindled, so a replacement had to be found. Jet miners discovered coal in lower York which they mined from estuary beds where the tide washed into fresh water channels. However, this alternative jet was inferior to the original. It was soft and didn’t respond to carving and polishing as well as the Whitby variety.

The jet industry then turned to other sources for their supplies, importing jet from Spain and Cannel bituminous coal from Scotland to Whitby for use in making mourning jewelry. While these types of coal lacked hardness and luster, both were still better than the coal from southern Yorkshire. Artisans soon began carving jewelry components from these alternatives, and then combined them with decorative components fashioned from true Whitby jet.

When supplies of alternative jet became difficult to come by, fabricators sought other black materials, including black onyx and French jet; also called Vauxhall. Both became equally popular. In reality, French jet and Vauxhall are black glass, and it became an excellent substitute for true jet because it remained shiny and wouldn’t fade. It’s often difficult to tell the difference between authentic and faux jet by sight alone. Handling the materials immediately tells the difference. Black glass is heavy and cold to the touch because it doesn’t conduct heat, whereas true jet is light and room temperature. The details on carved jet items are often clean and sharp, while molded black glass may not be as defined and can also show signs of chipping or flaking.

Jet wasn't the only black colored`natural material that jewelry makers used to carve into mourning items. Bog Oak, a brownish black fossilized peat found deep in the bogs of Ireland,  is dark, lightweight and room temperature. It may appear to have a slight wood grain visible through its matte surface. Jewelry makers also used ebony, the heavy, tight-grained dark wood from the ebonaceae tree, to carve into jewelry items.

But for the Victorians, jet symbolized the deep emotional tie to a loved one through death.