received a commendation from the judges for his work. He exhibited a table depicting a mosaic of a ship at sea; 110,800 tesserae were used in making the picture. The manufacturers of Tunbridge ware were cottage industries, and they were no more than nine in Tunbridge Wells and one in Tonbridge. The number declined in the 1880s; competent craftsmen were hard to find, and public tastes changed. After the death of Thomas Barton in 1903 the only surviving firm was Boyce, Brown and Kemp, which closed in 1927. Techniques Marquetry was an old technique which was continued by Nye and Barton to create images such as birds or butterflies. Stickware and half-square mosaic was invented by James Burrows in about 1830: a bunch of wooden sticks of different colours, each having triangular or diamond-shaped cross section, were tightly glued together; in the case of stickware, the resulting block was dried, then turned to form an article such as the base of a pincushion. For half-square mosaic, thin slices were taken from the composite block, and applied to a surface. Tesselated mosaic, was a development by James Burrows of half-square mosaic; it was adopted by George Wise and Edmund Nye. Minute tesserae were used to form a wide variety of geometric and pictorial designs. Many sorts of wood were used for the various colours; about 40 were in regular use. Only natural colours were used; green was provided by "green oak", produced by the action of fungus on fallen oak. Designs for articles were often taken from designs of Berlin wool work. See also Intarsia Lath art Marquetry Opus sectile Parquetry Pietre dure References External links Tunbridge ware Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery Tunbridge ware Article about Tunbridge ware Techniques of making Tunbridge ware Rye Castle Museum Tunbridgeware; museum includes a genuine preserved Tunbridgeware workshop Decorative arts Surface decorative techniques in woodworking Royal Tunbridge Wells Tonbridge