NAVIGATION

The Florentine ‘pietre-dure’ and Roman inlaid stone work found a ready market amongst the wealthy Grand Tourists of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Dukes of Devonshire were also impressed and began to commission local craftsmen in Derbyshire to create similar inlays in Ashford black marble, a dark limestone quarried near Ashford-in-the-Water. Henry Watson is regarded as the major figure in the development of the industry inlaying Ashford black marble in the 1750’s at his local water powered mill. The designs inspired by those of the Italian workshops consisted of randomly shaped pieces, regular geometric patterns or naturalistic pictures of flowers or butterflies. The earlier work is inlaid with local stones such as Blue John fluorspar, brown rosewood marble, oak-stone barite, dukes red marble and fossil limestones, together with green Russian malachite or Connemara marble.