Inlay

Inlay sets a piece of contrasting material -- wood, metal, shell, stone -- into a recess cut to its exact shape in a surrounding surface, glued in and leveled flush once seated, so the decoration sits embedded in the surface plane rather than raised above it the way applied moulding is. A router with a template and guide bushing, or hand-cut with a knife and chisel for more intricate shapes, are the two standard ways to cut a precisely matched recess.

Intarsia, a related technique, is close kin but distinct -- inlay sets a shape into a surrounding solid background, while intarsia assembles a picture entirely from separately shaped, edge-fitted pieces with no solid background at all.