ss of onlaying is INLAY, where one material is
not laid on to the other, but into it, both being perhaps backed by a
common material. The process is, in fact, precisely analogous to that
inlay of brass and tortoiseshell which goes by the name of its inventor,
Boule. The work is difficult, but thorough. It does not recommend itself
to those who want to get effect cheaply. The process is suited only to
close-textured stuffs, such as cloth, which do not fray.

[Sidenote: TO WORK INLAY.]

The materials are not pasted on to linen, as in the case of applique.
The cloth to be inlaid is placed upon the other, and both are cut
through with one action of the knife, so that the parts cannot but fit.
The coherent piece of material (the ground, say, of the pattern) is then
laid upon a piece of strong linen already in a frame; the vacant spaces
in it are filled up by pieces of the other stuff, and all is tacked down
in place. That done, the work is taken out of the frame, and the edges
sewn together. The backing can then, if necessary, be removed; and in
Oriental work it generally was.

Inlay lends itself most invitingly to COUNTERCHANGE in design, as seen
in the stole at A, Illustration 62. Light and dark, ground and pattern,
are there identical. You cannot say either is ground; each forms the
ground to the other. And from the mere fact of the counterchanging you
gather that it is inlaid, and not onlaid.

[Sidenote: TO WORK COUNTERCHANGE.]

Prior to inlaying in materials which are at all likely to fray, you
first back them with paper, thin but tough, firmly pasted; then, having
tacked the two together, and pinned them with drawing-pins on to a
board, you slip between it and the stuff a sheet of glass, and with a
very sharp knife (kept sharp by an oilstone at hand) cut out the
pattern. What was cut out of one material has only to be fitted into the
other, and sewn together as before, and you have two pieces of inlaid
work--what is the ground in one forming the pattern in the other, and
_vice versa_. By this ingenious means there is absolutely no waste of
stuff. You get, moreover, almost invariably a broad and dignified
effect: the process does not lend itself to triviality. It was used by
the Italians, and more especially by the Spaniards of the Renaissance,
who borrowed the idea, of course, from the Arabs.

[Illustration: 64. INLAY IN COLOURED CLOTHS.]

In India they still inlay in cloth most marvellously, not only
counterch