quite the inventor of the peculiar type of inlay which is chiefly
associated with his name; but no artist, before or since, has used these
motives with such astonishing skill, courage and surety. He produced
pieces of monumental solidity blazing with harmonious colour, or
gleaming with the sober and dignified reticence of ebony, ivory and
white metal. The Renaissance artists chiefly employed wood in making
furniture, ornamenting it with gilding and painting, and inlaying it
with agate, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, marble of various tints, ivory,
tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl and various woods. Boulle improved upon
this by inlaying brass devices into wood or tortoise-shell, which last
he greatly used according to the design he had immediately in view,
whether flowers, scenes, scrolls, &c.; to these he sometimes added
enamelled metal. Indeed the use of tortoise-shell became so
characteristic that any furniture, however cheap and common, which has a
reddish _fond_ that might by the ignorant be mistaken for inlay, is now
described as "Buhl"--the name is the invention of the British auctioneer
and furniture-maker. In this process the brass is thin, and, like the
ornamental wood or tortoise-shell, forms a veneer. In the first instance
the production of his work was costly, owing to the quantity of valuable
material that was cut away and wasted, and, in addition, the labour lost
in separately cutting for each article or copy of a pattern. By a
subsequent improvement Boulle effected an economy by gluing together
various sheets of material and sawing through the whole, so that an
equal number of figures and matrices were produced at one operation.
Boulle adopted from time to time various plans for the improvement of
his designs. He placed gold-leaf or other suitable material under the
tortoise-shell to produce such effect as he required; he chased the
brass-work with a graver for a like purpose, and, when the metal
required to be fastened down with brass pins or nails, these were
hammered flat and disguised by ornamental chasing. He also adopted, in
relief or in the round, brass feet, brackets, edgings, and other
ornaments of appropriate design, partly to protect the corners and edges
of his work, and partly for decoration. He subsequently used other brass
mountings, such as claw-feet to pedestals, or figures in high or low
relief, according to the effect he desired to produce. These mounts in
the pieces that undoubtedly come from B