Practically, nowadays marquetry is the cutting of thin sheets of wood which have been superimposed upon each other, and when taken apart, after the desired pattern has been cut away, fit into each other to produce the desired colour effect. For instance, a sheet of walnut, dark brown, placed over a sheet of sycamore, light yellow, has a pattern pasted on it in paper. The delicate fret-saw traces this pattern and cuts through both light and dark woods. The result is that the light-wood surface is left with a perforation ready to receive the piece cut from its fellow, the dark wood, and _vice versa_. That is just what the marquetry-worker does. He transposes the piece of sycamore to the walnut surface and fits it in, showing a yellow design on dark brown, and similarly the walnut piece, fitted in place or the sycamore ground, shows a brown design on a yellow surface. This is only a simple outline of the process, as more than two sheets are placed together. In its intricacies it represents one of the most delicate and highly skilled crafts in connection with cabinet-making. The adept at jig-saw puzzles may draw a seemly parallel between his pastime and the patient artistry of the artist-craftsman. =The Use of Veneer and Marquetry.=--In its decoration and in its form the long-case or "grandfather" clock is as Dutch as the tiles of Haarlem. Derivative as is English art, the sharp line of a new introduction is rarely so clearly defined as in the instance of the late seventeenth-century long-case clock. As a long wooden case it was itself an innovation. Being new, it was never at any previous time English, and it started its history under Dutch auspices, as in similar manner the pendulum was introduced into England by Fromanteel. There is no mistaking its origin. It comes straight from the placid canals and waterways, the prim and well-ordered farmsteads, or the richly loaded burghers' houses of the Low Countries. It has become as thoroughly English as the Keppels and the Bentincks. [Illustration: LONG-CASE CLOCK. With fine marquetry decoration. Maker, Jas. Leicester (Drury Lane). 1710. Height, 8 ft. 2 in. Width, 1 ft. 7-1/2 in. Depth, 10 in. (_By courtesy of Percy Webster, Esq._)] [Illustration: LONG-CASE CLOCK. Maker, J. Windmills (London). Date, about 1705. Decorated in marquetry.] [Illustration: ENLARGEMENT OF DIAL. Showing cherub's head with floriated design in spandrel and broken frieze. Marquetry in hood indicates coarser style than in rest of clock. (_By courtesy of H. Wingate, Esq., Rochester._)]