Like so many other forms of art it is probable that straw marquetry originated in the East. It was familiar in France in the seventeenth century when it reached a high degree of excellence, but it was little known in England until it was practised by French emigrants after the Revolution, and more especially by prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. Small cabinets and boxes, dressing-cases, caskets, mirror-frames, trays and a host of "knick-knacks" were made in this fashion, often with great delicacy and highly pleasing effects of colour. Two superimposed layers of flattened and tinted straw were cut through together, as in marquetry proper, and applied to the object (in wood or papier mache) to be decorated, but smaller articles were veneered with straw mathematically cut and fitted like mosaic. Sometimes the surface of the straw was engraved, or elaborate designs in low relief were composed with minute fragments of the material. The straw is said to have been tinted by steeping it in tea.