Making — Woodworking

Marquetry

Pictures built from thin wood veneers, cut and fit together by hand. A compass rose, finished, and a guinea pig still on the bench.

Type

Marquetry · Wall art

Material

Wood veneer

Role

Designed & made

Year

2026

Veneers a fraction of a millimeter thick, cut to shape, fit edge to edge with no gaps and no filler, then glued down to a panel. The colors are the wood itself.

Compass rose

Roughly eight inches square. Everything is cut to a full size paper pattern and built out from the center.

The first cut veneer pieces laid on a paper pattern beside a cutting mat — First pieces on the pattern

The center of the star assembled from alternating light and dark veneer points — Out from the center

The completed sixteen point star assembled on the paper pattern — The star closed up

The star set into a round veneer field on a dark rectangular background panel — Let into a round field

Thin border strips laid along the edges of the panel before gluing — Border strips going on

The glued panel pressed flat under a board weighted with a large jug of laundry detergent — Pressed flat under a jug of detergent, for want of a veneer press

The pressed panel, seams tight and surface flat, still on the cutting mat — Out of the press, seams tight

The finished compass rose panel held up, seen straight on — Sanded and finished

The finished compass rose seen at an angle, the grain in each piece catching the light differently — The same piece, off angle

Guinea pig

On the bench

The second piece is the first guinea pig we had, who passed away. I started from a photo of him and used AI to flatten it into a pattern of solid shapes and colors, then cut a piece of veneer for each one, matching the tone of the wood to the tone in the pattern.

The pattern for the guinea pig piece: a photo reduced to flat regions of solid color, each region a piece of veneer to be cut — The photo, flattened into shapes to cut to

Curves are the difficulty. On the rose a bad cut gets recut against a straightedge. Here every edge is unique and has to meet three or four others, so pieces go down onto the printed pattern and get held with tape until their neighbors arrive.

Early veneer pieces for the guinea pig taped onto the printed pattern — First pieces down

More veneer pieces filled in across the guinea pig, held with blue tape — Filling in the body

The guinea pig nearly complete in veneer — Nearly closed up

The assembled guinea pig laid out on the pale substrate panel, taped in position, with a craft knife beside it — Laid out on the panel it will be glued to

← Nightstand All work →