Inlay Wood Works

The Correale museum collection of historical inlay works

In 1937, Cav. Silvio Salvatore Gargiulo (known as Saltovar), an eclectic figure of Sorrento who was a poet, writer and artist, son of master carpenter Giuseppe Gargiulo, donated his splendid collection of furniture and objects enriched with inlay works from Sorrento to the Correale Museum.

The Correale Museum Saltovar collection consists of tables, caskets, boxes and panels, made by the greatest craftsmen of the golden age of marquetry from Sorrento. Of them all, the most admired object in the donation is the Secrétaire à dos d’âne (donkey’s back), unusual in its shape and entirely covered with wooden mosaic tesserae. The precious piece of furniture mainly serves the function of a writing desk with lectern, but conceals a small dressing table, a sewing box and a chessboard. The cabinet, which can be opened from both front and back, represents a true virtuosity of ebony carpenters from Sorrento: it took the master Gargiulo ten years of work (1900 -1910) to bring it to almost complete completion: in fact, the precious secretaire remains unfinished, some internal compartments remained in rough wood.
Also noteworthy is the collection of boxes on display, among which the one in carved wood with scrolls and inlaid with the classic folk scene of the Tarantella stands out.

The inlay work from Sorrento originated around 1830, when the local ebony carpenter Antonio Damora began to introduce inlay work and finishes in wood characterised by straight-cut, two-colour marquetry into his furniture production. Damora realised that surprising results could be obtained by exploiting the chiaroscuro play of two local woods, walnut and orange, accentuating the contrast by means of thin perimeter incisions, filled with black stucco.

Thanks to the encouraging results achieved and the approval of the buyers, Damora transformed his workshop in Via Tasso into a real furniture factory, availing himself of the collaboration of two expert craftsmen, Luigi Gargiulo (with a workshop in Largo dello Schizzariello) and Michele Grandiville whose workshop could count on the presence of no less than 43 workers. Grandville participated in and was awarded a prize for his inlay work at the 1862 Universal Exhibition in London.

In particular, Damora (called by Francis I of Bourbon to collaborate with the German Fischer on the furnishing and restoration of the Royal Palace) and Gargiulo are recognised as the founding fathers of inlaid wood work in Sorrento: Damora’s activity remained linked to the production of furniture while Luigi Gargiulo’s was oriented – over time – to satisfy the growing demand for small inlaid objects, destined to meet the needs of cultured foreign travellers visiting Sorrento.

The possibility of appealing to the tourists who increasingly flocked to the sunny Sorrento peninsula represented, forb, not only a source of personal satisfaction but also a strong economic stimulus: the demand to easily transport those admired decorations that initially adorned the furniture produced in Sorrento, was promptly met by the local craftsmen with the creation of small objects, real travel souvenirs of limited dimensions and sometimes removable: boxes with a variety of functions, small portable desks and lecterns, paintings, mirrors, frames, fans, castanets, etc. Thus, it was that knowledge of marquetry from Sorrento spread everywhere, in Europe but also overseas, and these artefacts became over time collectible objects.

As described by Carlo Merlo in his Guide to the City of Sorrento, by 1857 craft workshops almost predominated the streets of Sorrento’s historic centre: marquetry had acquired the weight of primary industry in the local economy!

Marquetry craftsmen from Sorrento had the ability to combine the beauty of the object with its usefulness, succeeding in arousing in the purchaser a strong evocative capacity of the place of origin and its characteristic customs and traditions, combining all this with extremely high levels of technical execution. The marquetry technique from Sorrento, complex and lengthy in its elaboration, was often the result of collaboration between several craftsmen, the draughtsman, the perforator, the maker, the cabinetmaker and the carpenter. From the execution of the preparatory drawing, inspired classical scenes (often the ruins of ancient Pompeii) or the representation of folkloristic aspects of everyday life (such as the depiction of the Tarantella), to the later floral motifs of the early 20th century, one moved on to the actual composition of the marquetry made from hundreds of small pieces of precious woods, the much-abundant olive tree of the Sorrento countryside, walnut, poplar, orange, and the more sought-after ebony and rosewood, recomposed by the skilled hands of the craftsman. The nuances were initially obtained by the ancient technique of ‘burning’, i.e., the passage of boiling sand in the cavities; by resorting to the refined technique of Indian ink, it was possible to enhance, with skilful chiaroscuro mastery, the details of the inlay.
The object was finally finished by sanding the surface and applying shellac or wax.

The craftsmen from Sorrento, in order to further embellish their works, associated other techniques with figurative inlay, such as carving and the refined and elaborate polychrome wood mosaic, suggested by the Opus tasselatum of the Roman period: the presence of the latter usually differentiates the historical inlay works from Sorrento from other inlay works of the same period, both very similar in terms of technique and composition.