A Pietre Dure Marble Tabletop

An octagonal-shaped Florentine Renaissance style 'Pietre-Dure' inlaid marble table top, decorated with scrolls of stylised floral and foliate motifs within with formal, framed borders. The artisan who created this top made these intricate patterns using hand-cut pieces of marble and of semi-precious stones which were inserted, piece by piece, into hollowed out shapes carved into the solid black marble slab.

Pietre Dure is a 15th century Italian Renaissance technique, where a marble slab is very precisely chiselled away to accommodate each of the shaped inlays. Typically, several inlaid parts will be required in order to form each single motif, or a pattern.

This octagonal top is currently displayed on a French wrought iron garden table, which is suitably strong and is painted a similar black to the pietre dure marble background. This French table sells separately for $1,200 and a similar table is listed on our website as stock nr 15457.