Mind your beeswax

A variation on jigsaw commesso is intarsio work. As in a late-16th-century Roman marble table top that Thomas restored, it involves drilling holes to the requisite depth, chiselling out the remaining stone, filing an inlay to fit, filling the hole with hot beeswax and dropping in the stone. ‘The beeswax dries in about 10 seconds, so you have to be very quick before it goes hard.’