The Museo Bottega della Tarsia Lignea Sorrentina represents a unicum in the Campania panorama, offering an innovative model of Museum of Applied Arts, in which the protection, cataloging and exhibition of historical production become living, active and effective tools for recovery, requalification and regeneration of contemporary productive activity; it also includes courses and initiatives for training, planning, production, promotion and marketing.

Thin wooden slabs, of various shapes, colors and shades, which skilled hands first work and then bring together, making them adhere to a surface and alternating them, in some cases, with further thin sheets of other materials (such as ivory or mother-of-pearl), to form perfect geometric designs, complex decorations or precise depictions of landscapes, portraits or still lifes.
Wood marquetry, an artisan activity that has risen over the centuries to the rank of pure artistic expression due to the complexity and refinement of the objects created, spread in Italy starting from 1300 to reach full maturity in the Renaissance period; although universally appreciated for its extraordinary artistic-craftsmanship qualities, wooden marquetry has always found, in a few specific well-defined territorial contexts, its places of production, including the Neapolitan area and the area of ​​the Sorrento peninsula.

Although already present in previous eras, Sorrento production reached the peak of its splendor at the beginning of the 19th century: attracted by the beauty of the places, the enormous flow of European foreign travelers also elevated Sorrento to a fixed stop on the "Grand Tour"; many of them choose to stay on the peninsula for long periods thus contributing significantly to fueling the local market and the related production of furniture and objects decorated with representative scenes of the local landscapes and culture.
Faced with a growing demand for their own artefacts and with international visibility and recognition, the Sorrento Master Craftsmen made their own the positive influences of the many artists who flocked to the Coast during the period, acquiring and in many cases even personalizing the technical evolutions they were establishing themselves in the field of marquetry; this is how the Sorrentine wooden marquetry (both in the form of marquetry and in that of cabinet-making) was able to carve out its own personal and well-characterized space in the ambit of European production, making itself appreciated for the choice of techniques (in particular of the mosaic) and of materials (specific woods of excellent quality obtained from the typical local vegetation) adopted.
In support of local production and to offer it an even more qualified professional training, the "Royal School of Applied Art to Inlay and Carving" was also established in Sorrento in 1886.

Today, the “Museo Bottega della Tarsia Lignea” in Sorrento is responsible for recounting and documenting this extraordinary story of Campania (and national) excellence, which through its historical collection on display consisting of furniture, objects, tools, paintings, prints, photos and period documents, allows the visitor to embark on a visual and emotional journey to discover this particular and excellent artisan production.
The interesting visit itinerary is divided into three sections: a) "Marquetry in Italy from the 15th to the 19th century", offers an excursus through the Italian and European tradition of manufacturing furniture and objects in wood inlay; b) "Sorrento in the 19th century", exhibits period paintings, prints and photographs relating to Sorrento, its landscape, its customs, thus facilitating the visitor's immersion in the cultural and economic environment in which the Sorrento production of furniture and inlaid objects; c) "La Tarsia Sorrentina in the 19th century" is the largest section of the Museum, Workshop where you can find finds and documents testifying to the manufacturing techniques, the tools used by the craftsmen, the decorative themes adopted, as well as obviously a large exhibition of works created by the local School of Art and by the great Sorrentine Master Inlayers of the 19th century.
Also in this section there is also the "Modern Collection" which instead offers examples of application of inlay to furnishing elements and objects of contemporary culture.

The "MUTA" houses the historical collection gathered by Alessandro and Alma Fiorentino which was established starting from the beginning of the 1980s with the acquisition of Sorrento inlaid objects and furniture from the 19th century, whose historical tradition was lost in those years the memory .
It was also during the 1980s that Alessandro Fiorentino, architect and pupil of Roberto Pane, also published his first precious study on the wooden inlay of Sorrento, thus resurrecting its memory.
At the end of that decade and throughout the nineties, there was thus a succession of exhibitions in Italy and abroad, aimed at rediscovering the historical productions of Sorrento and promoting contemporary production, also thanks to the support of the "Alessandro Fiorentino Collection". which in addition to managing the additional services of the MUTA today, represents an important production reality in the design and production of inlaid furniture for contemporary furnishings.
Since 1999, the year of its opening to the public, MUTA has become the fulcrum of every action aimed at safeguarding the memory of the Art of Sorrento Wood Inlay, as well as a fundamental tool for supporting and promoting the process of artistic renewal of this art .

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