Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French marqueter, to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns or designs.

Marquetry differs from the more ancient craft of inlay, or intarsia, in which a solid body of one material is cut out to receive sections of another to form the surface pattern.

The veneers used are primarily woods, but may include bone, ivory, turtle-shell (conventionally called "tortoiseshell"), mother-of-pearl, pewter, brass or fine metals.

The simplest kind of marquetry uses only two sheets of veneer, which are temporarily glued together and cut with a fine saw, producing two contrasting panels of identical design, (in French called partie and contre-partie, "part" and "counterpart").

Furniture inlaid with precious woods, metals, glass and stones is known from the ancient world and Roman examples have been recovered from the first century sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum demonstrating that the technique was highly advanced.

This work, called opere di commessi, has medieval parallels in Central Italian "Cosmati"-work of inlaid marble floors, altars and columns.

Floral marquetry came into favor in Parisian furniture in the 1750s, employed by cabinet-makers like Bernard II van Risamburgh, Jean-Pierre Latz and Simon-François Oeben.

Nevertheless, marquetry was introduced into London furniture at the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the product of immigrant Dutch 'inlayers', whose craft traditions owed a lot to Antwerp.

Panels of elaborately scrolling "seaweed" marquetry of box or holly contrasting with walnut appeared on table tops, cabinets, and long-case clocks.

At the end of the 17th century, a new influx of French Huguenot craftsmen went to London, but marquetry in England had little appeal in the anti-French, more Chinese-inspired high-style English furniture (mis-called 'Queen Anne') after ca 1720.

They were made by laboriously assembling and gluing thin strips and shaped rods, which then could be sliced crossways to provide numerous mosaic panels all of the same design.