intarsia
/ɪnˈtɑːsɪə
/noun [mass noun, often as modifier]
1A method of knitting with a number of colours, in which a separate length or ball of yarn is used for each area of colour (as opposed to different yarns being carried at the back of the work): an intarsia design...
- Individual colours can be tinted to order and various intarsia designs can be milled onto the Durat surface.
- Printed knits with vintage flora, graphic symbols, graffiti and ethnic motifs will stand alongside true intarsia rose knits.
- The Animal Knits book has some great intarsia patterns for kids sweaters/blankets, etc.
2An elaborate form of marquetry using inlays in wood, especially as practised in 15th-century Italy.The intricate intarsia (inlaid wood decoration) of the studiolo also illustrates how innovative art of the period required the purchasing power and political authority of influential patronage....
- This includes cottage crafts, intarsia woodwork, beautiful lampshades, jewellery, embroidery, candlewicking and heaps more.
- The carved chests and the intarsia tables could not be found in the miserable huts of the poorer strata.
2.1Inlaid work similar to intarsia but in stone, metal, or glass rather than wood.Here the detailing was fine and at the corners inlaid with an intarsia of different obsidians polished smooth....
- In the 1480s he was involved in a variety of commissions, including a design for an intarsia pavement and the execution of the monument to Bishop Piccolomini, both in Siena Cathedral.
- The candy-striped Duomo must be the only Christian church anywhere to host - on the intarsia marble floor - a portrait of that old neo-Platonic magus, Hermes Trismegistus.
Origin
From Italian intarsio; in sense 2 superseding earlier tarsia (from Italian, 'marquetry'); the knitting term dates from the mid 19th century.