Jabrail Quliyev

Wood marquetry maker

Kamal Muradzadeh©Michelangelo Foundation

From mark to masterpiece

Jabrail creates wood marquetry scenes and landcsapes
His pieces reflect the culture around the Caspian Sea and the Absheron peninsula
He sources his different wood types from all around the world

When Jabrail Quliyev went to visit the workshop of his carpenter friends in Russia, he encountered trees and wood types that were unfamiliar to the Caucasus region. This trip inspired him to explore the craft of intarsia and wood marquetry that originated in the Middle Ages, whereby a picture is created by inlaying different pieces of wood to create variations in colour and relief. Each composition begins with Jabrail finding a mark, or stain, on a wooden board and using it as an integral shape in his picture, kick-starting the piece. He recalls that learning this craft felt like learning the alphabet, since every type of wood, tree, colour combination and composition knack was utterly new to him. Jabrail had studied painting and sculpture prior to intarsia and this helped him with colour coding and relief techniques, resulting in the creation of exceptional marquetry landscapes.

Interview

Kamal Muradzadeh©Michelangelo Foundation

Kamal Muradzadeh©Michelangelo Foundation

Why did you choose this craft?: I have had a passion for wood since childhood. I have always made things out of wood, for myself. My love for wood led me to intarsia and marquetry. Without love, marquetry is not an easy craft.
How did you start to be involved in wood marquetry?: I was once in Moscow and visited my friends who are carpenters. They had many kinds of woods that they used in their works. The trees were from Africa: Wenge and Cassandra. These trees haunted me. The marks on those boards attracted me right away and I began to craft the natural marks on those trees into small animal figures.
What is the process of intarsia woodcraft?: I create a scene using the stains and marks already present on a piece of wood. It excites me to notice the lines and grain in pieces of wood that are 30-35 years old. Once I have decided on a theme for the stain, I choose wood in the colours I need. For example, Apache wood is light yellow. I then assemble the design with glue and compression.
What are your sources of inspiration?: I take inspiration from where I live and what I see in daily life on the coast of the Caspian Sea and in the Absheron peninsula. In my series The Misérables, I show people I have actually seen around, and in my series about salt collectors I portray what happened in World War II when the Nazis had seized most of the salt lakes in Absheron.

Jabrail Quliyev is an expert artisan: he began his career in 1995