Khatamkari is the Persian micro-mosaic marquetry of Isfahan and Shiraz, perfected under the Safavids: hair-thin rods of walnut, brass and camel bone are bundled, glued and sliced into six-branch stars packed inside hexagons — up to roughly 250 pieces per cubic centimetre. The finished surface is a lacquered walnut field, never a pale ground: a brown-gold geometric kaleidoscope where every seam is a rod and every star a radial tessellation of bone, brass and ebony.