Khatam kari

Khātam is an ancient Persian technique of inlaying. It is a version of marquetry where art forms are made by decorating the surface of wooden articles with delicate pieces of wood, bone and metal precisely-cut intricate geometric patterns. Khatam-kari or khatam-bandi refers to the art of crafting a khatam.

Khatam means “incrustation”. This craft consists in the production of incrustation pattern (generally star-shaped, with thin sticks of wood (ebony, teak, ziziphus, orange, rose), brass (for golden parts), camel bones (white parts). Ivory, gold or silver can also be used for collection objects. Sticks are assembled in triangular beams, assembled and glued in a strict order to create a cylinder, whose cross-section is a six-branch star included in a hexagon. These cylinders are cut shorter, compressed and dried between two wooden plates.