Marquetry demonstration part of woodworking seminar

By Katherine Nichols
Advertiser Staff Writer

Furniture maker Marian Yasuda is looking forward to this weekend's woodworking seminar for several reasons. Though she is absorbed in creating two koa rockers right now, she is always interested in acquiring new knowledge.

This is why she and fellow furniture maker Alan Wilkinson, with the Hawai'i Wood Guild and Hawai'i Craftsmen, invited master woodworker Silas Kopf from his studio in Easthampton, Mass., to share his virtuosity in the ancient technique of marquetry with local woodworking professionals and hobbyists.

"We tend to get a little stale because we're isolated," Yasuda said. She believes that introducing outside talent will "push people's limits a little bit."

"Silas is a man who is at the top of his field," Wilkinson said. "Worldwide there are few people who can match him."

According to Kopf, who graduated from Princeton with a degree in architecture and studied traditional marquetry at °cole Boulle in Paris, modern marquetry began in 15th-century Italy, where "wood craftsmen created intricate pictures with native woods to decorate choirstalls, walls and furniture." But the precursor to the technique started with Egyptian craftsmen 4,000 years ago, when "precious materials were pieced together to make designs."

"When people look at my work, they think it's inlay," he said in a phone interview from Massachusetts. "But there is a technical distinction between marquetry and inlay. Marquetry is made like a jigsaw puzzle out of thin pieces of wood veneer, and that's applied to another surface."

Inlay, meanwhile, is creating a hole and laying in a small design, Wilkinson said. Marquetry covers the whole surface with a floral or abstract motif.

In addition to presenting a slide show of "both contemporary and historic pieces that use marquetry," Kopf said he will demonstrate three or four different techniques as he works on a floral picture that will eventually be made into the top of a jewelry box. "The picture will probably be made out of 20 different woods," he said.

The reason the art is so expensive – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars for one piece of furniture – is that "it's really fine work," said Yasuda. "You have little room for error. You're basically decorating a piece you've already put a lot of hours into. It's very labor-intensive, and it takes quite a bit of practice to be good at it."

Kopf said he is looking forward to his first visit to Hawai'i. He also wants to learn more about some of the lesser-known species of Hawaiian woods. But his goal for the seminar is to "illuminate what may be a mystery for people. So when they go to a museum and see this type of decoration, they'll have a better understanding of how it's made, or feel more comfortable trying it themselves, because it is sort of arcane and challenging."