COLUMBIAN TAMO MARQUETRY OLLA

Jesus Ignacio de la Rosa-2016
Tamo Marquetry on Ash

After training in Hakone (箱根), a town in Kanagawa Prefecture (神奈川県) of Japan, Jesus Ignacio de la Rosa returned to his native Columbia where he began integrating traditional Japanese tamo Marquetry techniques to create a classically Columbian interpretation of this ancient Asian art form. First introduced at the Expo Artisano in Bogata, his novel work has been displayed around the world is included in numerous public and private collections.
Jesus’s Marquetry exclusively uses tamo, a species of ash that produces one of the world’s rarest and most treasured woods. Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns. In Marquetry, the craftsman takes specifically cut pieces of wood only a few millimeters thick and arranges them into a pattern. Much like fitting together a puzzle, this technique allows the artist to create delicate, intricate designs. It is exquisitely more complex than inlay, or intarsia, in which a solid body of one material is cut out to receive sections of another to form the surface pattern.
Our hand carved ash olla is accented with more than a thousand delicate slices of tamo Marquetry. The piece was made in 2016 in the artist’s studio in Pasto, Columbia and acquired directly from him.