Status Of Cunard's Queen Elizabeth Marquetry Panel

The Cunard Queen Elizabeth foyer panel, designed by David Linley's design studio and produced by ACE Marquetry is now well under way.  

The Queen Elizabeth Marquetry Panel
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Claire Englefield, the person behind ACE Marquetry, told me that it was the largest single piece of marquetry that she and her team have ever produced. The size was such that they had to rearrange the workshop to erect a temporary table large enough to assemble it in one piece.

"The marquetry is now completed. We made the panel in one large piece. We cut it up yesterday (it's in roughly nine panels in the photo) and it's now being sent to another Linley associated studio. There it will be pressed onto a lightweight MDF, bonded with an ultralight metal Hexalite substrate, then sanded and polished. They will then take the panels over to Italy for fitting onto the ship before it's maiden voyage in October."

Assembling Marquetry On A Grand Scale
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Claire's business has grown steadily since 1986, when she started hand cutting marquetry for her husband Alan's furniture business [See Alan's remarkable boxes at LINLEY and on his web site at Alan Englefield Architectural Boxes].   She now runs two lasers with a team of four employees producing work for many furniture makers around Britain, with the occasional International piece. 

Alan Englefield - Architectural Boxes

Although most of her time is taken up by the managerial side of designing and fabricating marquetry commissions, she did get involved in the cutting and assembly of this prestigious piece herself.

Claire is very proud of her long standing association with David Linley and Co. and now produces almost all of the marquetry used on their excellent range of products, from a simple marquetry picture frame to the magnificent Cunard panel.  It shows her versatility, when the next piece to go through the workshop, after the 5.6m tall panel, was a small marquetry crest, no bigger than 60mm in diameter, with hundreds of pieces, some no bigger than a pin head.