Definition of "marquetry" [marquetry]

• Material, such as wood or ivory, inlaid piece by piece into a wood surface in an intricate design and veneered to another surface, especially of furniture, for decoration. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The inlay of wood has been called marquetry and intarsia, and was used principally on furniture and choir stalls."
• "Rob Milam uses a technique called marquetry to create stunning portraits out of wood veneer."
• "Yet while the straight lines and flat veneered panels of Koloman Moser's "Enchanted Princesses Cabinet" 1900 foreshadow a design vocabulary several decades in the future, the long-haired princesses inlaid in marquetry are pure Pre-Raphaelite medievalism, proving that Romantic ideas weren't entirely discarded by the rising generation."