Small Intarsia
by Judy Gale Roberts & Jerry Booher

Review by Mark Gezella – December 2003

In keeping with the season, this month's offering provides a few holiday projects that would make even a scrooge smile!

"Small Intarsia" is authored by Judy Gale Roberts with support from spouse Jerry Booher. Judy has almost single-handedly launched the intarsia craze and has been featured in many publications for her award-winning work. I recall Judy bursting on the national scene with the help of Wood Magazine in the late eighties. She was featured in an article that described her craft along with many illustrations of work she had done. Since then her name has become synonymous with the art of intarsia. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, she must be quite flushed, because I see copies of her designs at just about every craft fair that I attend!

For the uninitiated, intarsia is defined as follows; "A mosaic of wood fitted and glued into a wooden support popular in 15th century Italy for decoration; also: the art or process of making such work.". It has also been referred to as
"painting pictures with wood". I think of intarsia as a type of dimensional work with limited carving effort.

"Small Intarsia" is a how-to book complete with plans for making basic, small-scale intarsia projects. Like most instructional books, it begins with wood selection and basic tool descriptions. Judy likes to use cedar and basswood for her projects for ease of use. The wood should be knot-free, and sapwood is mixed with heartwood as accent parts of projects. A scroll-saw is indispensable for this type of work, so I hope you paid attention to last month's speaker!! Additional implements ranging from X-acto knives to sanders are employed to aid the shaping process.

The book jumps right into project work after the quick intro. Each project is it's own chapter, which makes it easy to segregate items presented. Eachchapter includes patterns and related tips. There are also some buying guides for supplemental material used in some of the projects. There are quite a few animal designs, followed by some nature "pictures" and a few seasonal items. One in particular caught my attention. It's a plump, smiley-faced snowman, which would make a perfect gift at Christmas-time!

The book is a pretty good how-to reference, though she wrote earlier instructional books, which expound on the basics of "mosaic" type woodworking. Judy is also praised for her teaching skills, and holds many workshops
throughout the year. Her web-site features additional work, along with class location, schedules and links to other sites. The Internet address is www.intarsia.com.

This book is available for checkout in the Guild library. If you have any interest in this type of craft, you would do well to investigate this or other works by this talented crafts-person.