I had not intended to take so long to continue the narrative of this box, so thank you to all who have been patiently waiting to see more of it.
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| Preparing the box for the intarsia |
We left off, in the last post, with the bone border surrounding the intarsia love knot. That seemed like a big "milestone" at the time, but little did I know what infinitesimal progress I had actually made in the scope of the whole project. Since I never made a plan, or drawings, I really had no idea what was going to come out. As I got started, I made several changes to my initial mental idea for the box.
I had actually "kicked around" several ideas of how I would make and decorate the box. Some of the ideas were not very ornate, and I even contemplated using some small raised panels made up for another job but were ultimately not needed. At some point, I settled on using some intarsia blanks that I had left from a different project from 2007 or 8. Once I had gotten to this stage, though, there was no more guessing about what I wanted to do, and I had a firm idea and was "on a mission". From this point, it was "full steam ahead" for the next two months!
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| Applying the first batch of intarsia, a small step in a long process |
The method for the intarsia that I had used is done by making lots of thin plates of various timbers, gluing them together in layers of alternating colours, then slicing pieces from those blanks and gluing them back together to form patterns. This method is known as "Intarsia Certosina", (named after a region of Italy where it was produced extensively in the 13th and 14th centuries.) Once the pattern has been established, and that might take two, three, or even more stages of cutting and gluing up again, then one is left with a "blank" from which multiple sheets or strips of the same design may be cut.
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| Some intarsia blanks including the "love Knot" used for this box |
The process is time consuming, and requires a lot of patience and a need for the utmost precision, as the more "off" one piece is, the more it affects every other piece that is joined to it. I did a big project close to twenty years ago in which I made lots of the stuff, so I had plenty of blanks to choose from. I used one for the front, a second for the ends, and a third for the back; each with a different pattern.
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| laying out the end pattern |
The process involves slicing the pieces off and then gluing them on with hide glue. The blank for the ends was not quite long enough, so I had to join sections of another strip to make it work. The gluing process was a combination of cramping and using a small hammer to press the pieces into the glue. I tried making a little video to show some of that process, but holding the camera and doing it at the same time is not easy. I think that is best left to the younger generations.
For the ends, I just cramped a wooden block over the entire end, which made the gluing go a bit faster. I could not do this for the front and back because the bone pieces stood proud of the surface and it would not have been able to lay flat.
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| Gluing up. Some blanks in the background |
With a front and two ends done, it really felt like I was making good progress. It was starting to look like something interesting, as well. Still, at this stage, there was nothing potentially "mediaevel looking about the box.
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| Front and end all glued up; ready for some borders |
Once I had the main fields filled in with intarsia, it was time to move on to the next step, which was making a border to go around each face. The border material was made up the same way as the other parts; by gluing together thin strips into a "bank" and then cutting from that.
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| Marking out, cutting and then gluing on the border |
After the borders were fit on, glued up and everything was dry, it was time to flatten and smooth out the surface. This was done with the cabinet scraper to avoid tearing anything out, which might have happened with a plane.
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| Scraping the face and the final result |
Once all of the intarsia was finished, the real work was ready to begin; that of making the bone border. When I started, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I really enjoyed doing it. That subject, however, is for the next post, as this is already getting too long. Stay tuned...
