Jacky Cavallari, trained at the École Boulle, one of the few living masters of marquetry.

It represents an almost extinct craft, entirely manual, that few artisans command at this level.

Hoopoe Picture: the marquetry that brings wood to life, veneer by veneer

Q: What is the Hoopoe Frame?

A marquetry picture depicting a hoopoe, made of thin sheets of wood fitted by hand, without paint.

Q: What does the technique involve?

Traditional 18th-century marquetry: fitting thin veneers by hand; the colour is the wood itself.

Q: What materials were used?

Twenty-five woods, both natural and dyed, such as maple, sycamore, ebony and tulipwood dyed black.

A picture of a hoopoe made in marquetry by Jacky Cavallari, with 25 woods and an 18th-century technique in which the colour is the wood itself.

September 8, 2026 3 min readBy Tiago Reis

Quadro Poupa em marchetaria de Jacky Cavallari - Ra-Ro

By Tiago Reis, co-founder of Ra-Ro · View profile

About 3 min read

At first glance, the Hoopoe Picture looks like a painting. Only when we get closer do we realise there isn't a single brushstroke. It's all wood. And then the piece changes completely.

The Hoopoe Picture is a work of marquetry by Jacky Cavallari, who trained at the École Boulle in Paris and is today one of the few living masters of this art. The bird is built up veneer by veneer, using the same technique as the traditional marquetry practised in the 18th century.

So what exactly is marquetry?

Marquetry is the art of composing images by fitting together very thin veneers of wood in different tones, cut so precisely that the joins disappear. In this picture, in brown, Jacky Cavallari used twenty-five wood veneers, including maple, plane, ebony and tulipwood dyed black.

I really love this part. Every tone we see in the Hoopoe comes from a wood chosen to be there. There's no possible shortcut. If a veneer doesn't fit, you start again.

Detail of the marquetry in the Hoopoe Picture

Why did this piece make me stop?

There's something stubborn, in the best sense, about someone who keeps working like this. Marquetry demands a precision that time cannot hurry, and Jacky Cavallari accepts that rule completely. You can feel it in the picture, veneer by veneer.

And then there's the Hoopoe. A bird that always seems to have an ancient secret to tell and that, when it perches still on a branch, leaves you feeling that freedom has its own colour, shape and rhythm. Choosing this bird for such a patient technique doesn't strike me as an accident.

Who is this picture for?

For people who love objects that reward a second look. From afar, a beautiful image. Up close, a lesson in patience. It's hard not to be moved when you realise how much work fits into every centimetre of this wood.