INLAYING is the art of producing an or namental surface by inserting varicolored forms and substances and reducing, the whole to a smooth uniform condition, but with a pattern formed by the contrasting material introduced. Its essential difference from mosiac work (q.v.) is that mosaic is mainly made up of very small surfaces, while inlaid work is additional to a surface, as of wood on ivory, already existing, to add to its beauty. Various kinds of metal or wood, or pearl, ivory, etc., are employed in this process, which is now applied chiefly to the production of ornamental articles of fur niture. When wood of one color is inlaid with others of different colors, as in ornamental de vices in flooring, it is generally called parquetry, the various pieces of wood being usually dis posed in regular geometrical figures. Marquetry or marqueterie is simply the French term for inlaying. The art of inlaying iron or steel with other metals, as gold or silver, is called dam ascening. Buhl and reisner work, once highly prized, have lost much of their celebrity. The former took its name from Buhl, an Italian resi dent in Paris in the reign of Louis.XIV, and the
latter was designated after Reisner, a German who not long after settled in the same city. Buhl for the most part inlaid brass on tortoise shell, Reisner a dark wood on a tulip-wood ground. The usual instrument for cutting out veneers for inlaying is a fine saw, mounted in a bow or arched handle, and worked in short quick movements. Three or four veneers are sometimes cut simultaneously in this way. In laying with stone, in which the Florentines have long excelled, is called pietra dura, and differs from mosaic in having the holes not cut through the ground, which is commonly of black marble, but only to a regulated depth. An Indian variety of inlaying, in which the inlaid metal occupies more of the surface than that which forms the ground, is called Kuttgari; and in another variety, Tutenague or Bederywork, small pieces of silver are hammered into spaces previously cut in the ground, which consist of one part of copper to four of pewter, and is thus both hard and easily cut.