The marquetry commode — a chest of drawers with a surface inlaid in pictorial or geometric patterns of contrasting veneers — appears in poems about Louis XV and Louis XVI France as the high point of furniture-making as art; A poem about Versailles might describe a marquetry commode by Riesener or Oeben: "the wood telling a story in its own grain — flowers in fruitwood, urns in sycamore, the whole surface a garden that would not wilt"; In a poem about the Revolution, the marquetry commode is at risk: "they burned the furniture of the old world in the courtyard — the marquetry giving off a sweet smell as it went, as if the wood were still trying to be beautiful"; The technique of marquetry — cutting and fitting dozens of different veneers to create a single image — suits poems about patience and the labour that supports beauty; A poem about a London dealer's showroom might describe a marquetry commode being sold to an American collector: "the most French thing in the room, going to the most un-French destination — the ocean between them no wider than the price"; In a poem about ageing and surface, the marquetry commode's inlays lift slightly with humidity: "the flowers beginning to speak again after a century's silence, the wood remembering its separate origins."