Spotlight: Marquetry Without Wood

As I’ve written before, the Free Verse exhibit at the Messler Gallery at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship showcases some really fantastic marquetry artists doing interesting things with the craft. I want to use the exhibit as an opportunity to write about some common themes.

The first one that I’ll post about is marquetry artists using materials other than wood. While many of the artists in the show made use of non-wood materials in their pieces, the two that I am going to highlight here are Susan Bart and Anne Lecorguillé.

Susan Bart is a Spanish artist who creates sculptures that incorporate marquetry. Susan is interested in ecology and pollution, particularly plastic waste, and she uses recycled plastic that she salvaged as a medium for her sculptures. Susan’s piece in the exhibit, Dystopian Poppy, is a giant flower growing out of a pot of plastic shards. It’s difficult to see in photos, but the stem of the plant is covered in tiny scales made of plastic. It’s such a striking piece, simultaneously delicate and ominous, and I’m so glad that Susan was able to make the trip from her home in Bilbao to be at the gallery reception and tell us about her work.

Anne Lecorguillé is a French artist who specializes in straw marquetry. Straw marquetry is a technique in which flattened pieces of straw – usually rye, sometimes dyed with vibrant colors – are used instead of wood veneer. It is an old technique, probably originating in Asia, and it became very popular in Europe in the 1920s, at the height of the Art Deco movement. Anne’s piece, a large wall panel called Straw Jewelry, shows off the luminous nature of the straw, with the lines radiating out from the center coming to life as they catch the light. The intricate wheels in the middle of the piece are a nod to Anne’s experience as a jewelry artist.