Inlaid Wood Box Marquetry Band Carved Heart Lidded Trinket Box Vintage Wooden For Sale

A small wooden box with a lift off lid, the lid banded across one end with a strip of geometric marquetry in light and dark woods and carved on the underside with a heart. The body is a single block hollowed to a rectangular well with rounded corners, finished bright. The marquetry band is laid flush into the surface rather than applied on top of it.

The banding is the interesting part. A strip of pattern like this is not cut piece by piece for the box it ends up on. It is built as a long composite billet, with square rods of contrasting wood glued into a block in the pattern you want, and then sliced across the grain like a loaf, so one billet yields dozens of identical strips. The technique has been used from Sorrento to Damascus to Mexico and the name changes with the place, but the economics are the same everywhere: the skilled work happens once, at the billet, and the boxes are assembly. The heart cut into the underside of the lid is the opposite, a single hand mark on a piece otherwise made to a pattern, and whoever made it put it where only the owner would see.

Lid and base both present, the lid seats correctly on the well. No splits, cracks or separations found in the body or in the marquetry band. The finish is scratched across the lid and shows handling marks on the sides and corners. Light darkening along one edge. The inlay is complete with no missing pieces. The interior is clean and unlined.

About five inches long, three inches wide and two inches tall, taken against the quarter and the tape in the photographs. One box, lid and base.