Introduction and Short Historic of the inlay working Art
Handicraft is a treasure of local culture, civilization and thoughts, emollient of violent and soulless industrialized modern life, that’s why, it is called the beating heart of artistic, cultural and economic goods. The industry of inlay working is one of the delicate arts which have an ancient root and history. This art, like any other art, is a beautiful and valuable art, which is the result of art and sense of eastern people. Handicraft is the result of sense and art which has been changed a lot during past decades and the economic, social and industrial situation of our society have created. And with emerging industrial revolution, many of the arts and professions have put aside or were eradicated totally. Although, these arts and professions have put aside in production, they have the ability for achieving higher income, in condition that, all officials and authorities, support marketing, holding organized training classes and periods, and preparing required texts for qualitative and quantitative progress in handicrafts production. Explaining educational texts is considered as one of the requirements of progress and improvement in handicraft arts situation, unfortunately, today content of most of books and articles in this case, just mentioned date and arts description and there is not enough instruction text. Common words and terms of this case are just familiar for experts in this profession, and public people, even lexicographers, doesn’t have enough information about that.
As we know, handicraft is considered as important export items regarding exchange import to the country. In another hand, there are few who are occupied in this area directly and it is worth to take an important and valuable step by covering and identification them and also establishing marketing and handicraft syndicate and support products exports for efflorescence of economy and handicraft.
Inlay or seal is one of the beautiful and proud of the world. The art of decorating the surface of wooden articles in shape of semi-mosaic with two or three sided triangles made of ivory, various kinds of woods, bones and metal.
Inlay art, during its appearance and evolution, has been transferred chest by chest and from master to apprentice or from father to his son and unintentionally has been changed to be in the modern form which we know it now. During this transfer, perhaps, a lot of secrets and techniques have been forgotten and many facts have been replaced by legends.
Short historic of inlay and inlay working
This art has been found in Middle East since ancient times. Inlay working art is a specific type of handicraft art which doesn’t have a long life. The oldest of that in Europe almost have been found in the same time of oldest sample found in Iran. in Italy, a special kind of this handicraft art was small pieces of bones, ivory or woods , sometimes painted, which formed a shape when were put beside each other, and its age returns to 14th century. It seems that inlay working has been appeared in the modern shape before Safavid dynasty and in era of Mongol Ilkhans’ reign on Iran and in the time of establishment a direct relation between Iran and China was brought to Iran, but, it was existed in Iran since before appearance of Islam. The most important center of inlay working in nowadays world is Iran, however, other countries such as India, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Palestine have inlay working, but they don’t have the age and precision which inlay is performed in Iran. Indeed, this art belong to Iran. Iran’s inlay has the first rank in international galleries.
According to the speech of one of the experts in this art, who has lived many years with this art and has learned inlay since childhood, says” this art has two stages:
1- building seal(inlay), which include operations such as designing, preparing materials and cutting them and also preparing clay and at last forming stature( cubic object with an average 40cm length and 10cm width and a 3cm diameter from wood or other materials such as bone and metal) and its cutting to thin layers.
2- Inlay working, which include infrastructure, designing and sticking inlay layers on the infrastructure, burnishing and buffing inlay objects.
He says: beginning time of this art is not obvious and it is said that short historic is usually associated with legends. But according to speech mentioned by one of the experts of inlay worker, this art in its modern shape have been appeared in safavid era, in time of Ilkhan Mogul domination on Iran and following forming a direct relation between Iran and China. Some other researchers believe that inlay working was founded in Deylaman era in Iran and the city of Shiraz and achieved to its full bloom in Safavid era, because the support of government from artists and in another hand establishing commercial relations with far and neighbor countries had an important role in development of inlay working art.
he says: a specific type of inlay have been existed in Iran, before appearance of Islam, and it was how that some cubes with sides 4mm were built from One-color wood and then were stick on surface to form various designs, and was common till a few centuries after entrance of Islam to Iran.
Inlay, at first was formed from sticking big triangles beside each other; with colors depend on the origin country. the color which were used in china were black and white, but, as inlay was brought to Iran, gradually taste and desire of Iranian people was mixed with that and created a modern form of inlay working and also created a variation in colors and used the colors black, red, green and yellow. Furthermore, some innovations also were made in geometric shape. For example, Chinese inlay were often in shape of square or hexagonal, but Iranian added other geometric shapes with three, five, eight, ten and twelve sides. In china, the wire used was made of zinc and tin, but, In Iran it was made of brass.
I also asked about how inlay is built and he said: in inlay working, wood, bone or metal is cut in shape of triangle based prism and put they beside each other in a way that transect of them would produce regular geometric objects and Shapes, then in the next step, these thin cuts are paste regularly with wood adhesive on a thin wooden surface. At last after drying pieces they are put on objects to decorate. The finer and delicate triangles are, the inlay is higher grade. In a design of inlay, for producing the smallest geometrical unit, at least three triangles, and for making largest unit at most, four hundred triangles are put beside each other.
This inlay worker expert says about materials and ingredient:
Types of wood are the most important material in inlay working which includes various types of wood such as Jujube, sour orange, walnut, white wood, beech, cineracens, boxwood, ebony, betel, palm, drecht and pettm. Various types of bones are also used for enhancing strength and also white color to the inlaid articles which often include bones of camel, horse and cow. Natural and artificial envoys are also used in inlay working. For better resistance in inlaid articles and also maintaining them in good condition, some of colored metals are also used in working, which usually are silver and aluminum for white color, and brass for yellow color.
He believes that, a lot of attention should be paid in selecting the proper materials to have the best possible results. For example you should be careful in selecting wood you want to use in inlay, a wood which have proper color and issue and have no crack in it, in selecting metals you should be careful to choose metals with proper alloys. That’s why brass is used a lot in inlay industry and is the most common metal in this art. In using bones you should care to issues such as health of the sacrificed animal, freshness of the bone and its whiteness. Of course it should be noted that bones are prepared during a few steps including removing fats, floating in lime solution.
Then he continued answering and introduced his instruments:
For creating this art we would needs tools such as miter and band saw, triangle scraper, chisel, metal meter, fixed ruler, square and compass.
Inlay working art inventor
There are various stories about the inventor of this art between inlay workers and researchers, but they all agree on one thing, we don’t know who did inlay work for the first time, and there are stories about it which associated with legend. Some of the experts in inlay working believe that, this art is a miracle from the god.
Egyptian craftsmen have inspired this art like many other arts and professions from Copts. Some piece and tablets with wood or bone decoration on them have been found in Eyn-al-Sare (near Cairo) in early years of Islam and many of them are in Islamic industries museums of Cairo and Berlin. One of the most beautiful and valuable inlaid work is in Metropolitan museums.
Oldest artistic inlaid works remained:
There are various kinds of excellent inlaid works in various museums across the world, including inlaid chess board which is kept in Benacki museum in Athens, Greece, and is one of the most valuable inlaid works from Safavid era in Iran. Maybe the best contemporary piece of inlaid work is the inlaid table which achieved Gold medal of Brussels Gallery in 1958. Other historical pieces of this art include, doors made of walnut wood and covered with bones or various woods and was produced by an expert of this art in 1591 and is kept in government museum of Berlin.
Also, doors decorated with flowers, buds and geometric shapes built in Bukhara, and now are kept in Albert and Victoria museums of London, England are other pieces of inlaid works which have remained from older times.
Inlay working materials and ingredients:
Types of wood: betel, ebony, jujube, king wood, carpinifolia, haematoxylon, sour orange, boxwood, Alder, Aspen, beech, walnut, and some of the colored woods.
Metal: silver or golden wires, brass, copper aluminum
Bone: leg or hand bone of camel, ivory, artificial bones
Green color: this color is a mix of ammonium chloride, copper filing and vinegar. Cut bones are poured in a color solution container and are exposed to sunlight for six months. nowadays, since it is difficult to prepare camel bones, often , camel bones is replaced by sour orange wood and for painting that a green color special for wool coloring.
Red color: drawings and geometric shapes which seem red in inlaid works, often is prepared by jujube wood.
Brown color: this color is used less than other colors in inlaid works but if required, usually dark brown is made from betel wood.
Glue: wood adhesive, paste
The steps of making an inlay work:
First different kind of wood in different colors are provided and then with the relevant tools they are cut each horing 30 cm length and 1-5.2 mm diameter and some triangles are prepared from them, which after filing, all the lateral are made according to the plan and as desirable and in order to finish the plan, there is a need for metal wires which some steps are taken to prepare them. Then to make inlay, the head-artisian draws the drawings of different figures which are to be made in order to make inlay and these wooden triangles or metal ones are put beside each other by the hands of skillful artist and glued to each other and made firm with the use of strings of which made called paddle( expression) After some hours the strings are filed and four paddles which have been made are put beside each other and then are glued to each other again resulting in something called “toglo”( expression) the next steps which is popular as making flowers is initiated. In this step, 6 wires are glued around each corner by a round metal wire which is made in six lateral figure and called shamse, and then the resulting structure is firmed by strings which a star-like plan is obtained, these plans are so repeated that the required general plan is made and put under pressure of press machine which is called stature. The stature are cut by circled saw to 1-2 mm layers which is called “Lengeh” and inlay work is made after some steps of cutting and gluing the very delicate layers to each other that all of these steps from the beginning up to the end consists of 400 operational steps. The inlay work are glued based on the plan, color, shape, dimensions and the place of application and by making different plans and making similar figures or symmetrical shapes, all the plan surface is adorned by signets which is then prepared by performing some repairs, filing, brushing and under cuttings and finally grinding and straightening of inlay surface, and then oiling and polishing by some special materials such as sealer and polisher. The quality of a seal (inlay) depends on its fine drawing and regularity of the plan, all of which are summarized in the skills of head artisian. In valuable and expensive inlay works, metal parts of seal (inlay) is made of gold or silver and bone is replaced by ivory. The most well-known types of inlay is called “inversed-paddle” and wired. This art has not seen any change since two hundred years ago.
Inlay oiling and polishingBasically inlay surface is oiled for two reasons: polishing inlay and protecting that against moisture, warmth and cold. In past times, polish oil or sandlus( pine tree extract) was used for oiling. After that, Havilux oil was used and today poly ester is used for polishing or oiling.
Inlay has various kinds regarding the paste used for making that. Among them we can mention as most important such as: reversed paddle, paddled, cloud, nine-flower layered, six flowered and traditional design, arc shape, Shamse and flowered margin.
Relation between inlay working and some other professions:
Carpentry, mesh cutting, miniature, poly estering, leathering
Characteristics of a high quality inlay work:
1- Straight and flat surface and existence no empty hole in inlay
2- Unify color and materials
3- Stability of shape and color
4- Repairing, sliding, pasting is not obvious on the surface
5- Symmetry in all flowers, shapes in all angles and laterals
6- Precision and engineered basic and structure, which include issues such as same laterals, symmetric and same size shapes cause if design base was not in good condition, the best type of inlay doesn’t seem good. That’s why an expert inlay worker should be an expert carpenter too.
7- Coloring, layering should be unify and without any scratch
8- Smaller triangles and shapes, inlaid work would be more valuable
Note that all inlaid works should be kept away from heat, moisture and direct sunlight and avoid cleaning them up with wet tissues and also avoid using any kind of polish on the inlaid work surface
For more information you can refer to our website and watch the learning video of construction steps.
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