Louis XVI style table

Ebénisterie Mathieu VATH

Here is a Louis XVI style table, which is probably an early 20th-century piece. It was likely made in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, or perhaps at the École Boulle. I have seen apprentice furniture of this quality made by students during their training. Its frame is oak, while the veneer is rosewood and mahogany with a black inlay. The restoration was straightforward, apart from a lack of rosewood in the marquetry […]

Tool cabinet – End

Ebénisterie Mathieu Vath

And there you have it, it's finished and ready to use. All the tools are in their proper place. All that's left is to find bronze fittings for the handles and keyhole escutcheons. For the finishing technique, I used the same one applied to furniture of that period: polishing. I first scraped the surface, then sanded it with 150-grit sandpaper. Next, I applied Venetian tripoli mixed with olive oil using a piece […]

Tool cabinet – Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam

Ebénisterie Mathieu Vath

I indulged myself with this marquetry project; I had always wanted to recreate this famous marquetry fresco. This allowed me to revisit David Roentgen's "mosaic marquetry" technique. I created a pack with a hornbeam leaf, a sycamore maple leaf, and a pear leaf to make the figures, as pear wood is the best for reproducing skin tones. To tint the background, I dipped it in different baths to produce this effect of […]

Tool cabinet – The sculptor

Mathieu Vath

The idea behind this tool cabinet was to explore and implement the various projects I was researching. One of these ideas was to tackle the marquetry technique of a famous 18th-century cabinetmaker, David Roentgen. This technique, known as "mosaic marquetry," involves cutting a single sheet of veneer using a conical saw and then coloring it by dipping each piece in a pre-defined dye. However, there were two problems to overcome: Conical sawing, which is difficult to […]