Persian Marquetry Khatam Kari Tobacco Pipe, Europe Design

Persian Marquetry or Khatam Kari means “incrustation work”. Khatam kari is one of the Persian arts of marquetry wherein the surface of wooden or metallic articles is decorated with pieces of wood, bone and metal cut in a variety of shapes and designs. The Persian Marquetry consists in the production of incrustation pattern (generally star-shaped, with thin sticks of wood (ebony, teak, ziziphus, orange), brass (for golden parts), camel bones (white parts). Ivory, gold or silver can also be used for collection objects. Sticks are assembled in triangular beams, themselves assembled and glued in a strict order to create a cylinder, 70 cm in diameter, whose cross-section is the main motif: a six-branch star included in a hexagon. These cylinders are cut into shorter cylinders, and then compressed and dried between two wooden plates, before being sliced for the last time, in 1 mm wide trenches.