For years, I have long wanted to do marquetry realisations of Chinese Peking opera masks. I was fascinated by their range of designs and colours. Each pattern could mean something and even the colours could represent an emotion or a feeling. I never had the skill set nor the know-how to even start attempting to create a marquetry version of one. Up until now.
I am no expert but from what I gather, this mask represent a character by the name of ‘郑子明’ or ‘郑恩’, - A general of the Song Dynasty.
This piece allowed me to explore incorporating different materials. I used bone (for the jaw), brass (for the forehead) and mother of pearl (for the eyes and lips).
This was a very complex design to work on and was glad to finally complete it. This marks the end of my training in Paris and the start to my marquetry realisations.
