The Art of Marquetry

I chose to base this work on the official vector artwork, respecting all the heraldic conventions governing the Princely Coat of Arms.

For aesthetic and artistic reasons, I took the liberty of adding detail to the figures and the rest of the design that make up the coat of arms.

This marquetry was created using the piece-by-piece technique. This highly complex method involves around twenty steps, cutting every piece individually according to a technical line drawing.

The pieces are then assembled one by one to bring the subject and final image to life, much like a painter creating a canvas. All cutting is done with a scroll saw fitted with a 0.2 mm blade.

This unique piece is made up of over 1,000 elements. The most complex part is the collar of the Order of Saint-Charles: the microscopic size of certain elements pushed me to the limits of the technique, cutting the 300 pieces of the medal with its small 20 mm-diameter crown from no fewer than 100 pieces.

At the top, the crown is made of Ceylon satinwood, and the pearls are in black and white mother-of-pearl. At the bottom, some pearls are made from Amboyna burl, a very rare wood species from Asia.

At the center, the diamond shapes on the shield are in red ash and bleached white ash. The red mantle is in dyed sycamore, the white ermine lining in bleached spotted maple. The figures' robes are in elm, their faces in alder. The 'Deo Juvante' ribbon is in aromatic cedar.

The background (recessed) is in Italian walnut. The frame is in elm in the colours of the Principality. The edges of the frame are finished with 24-carat gold leaf, sealed between two coats of lacquer.

The poplar background, selected for the quality of its grain, was hollowed out with a scalpel; all other elements were cut with a scroll saw. The precision and quality of the cutting make the joints imperceptible to the naked eye.

The tyres are cut from fossil oak, an exceptional wood prized for its rarity as well as its distinctive aesthetic qualities. This wood, extracted from the peat bogs of Brière in Loire-Atlantique, displays shades ranging from brown to raven-wing black.

These were originally forests bordering rivers, uprooted by climatic upheavals. Over time, the trunks — deprived of oxygen through immersion several metres deep in the peat — absorb minerals from the iron-rich soil and undergo a long fossilization process spanning several thousand years, with some carbon-14 datings ranging from 2,000 to 6,000 years. Only 20% of the extracted material is usable.

The Automobile Club logo alone comprises 270 elements and required considerable technical expertise, given that some of the pieces measure no more than 0.2 mm.

All the polychrome tints are achieved from specific white woods, immersed in a 70°C aqueous solution with colour pigments and a fixative; the wood veneers remain in the hot water for several days so that the wood is thoroughly impregnated to its core.

This complex piece of marquetry required around twenty steps to complete.