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Apr 6, 2022 · During this period, mosaic tiles were made from various materials such as ivory, stones and shells, many of which were found in the local area, but Mesopotamia is not the only example of mosaic use. The Maya Mesoamerican civilization used mosaics as an independent art form as far back as 1500 BCE. However, it wasn't until the Sassanid Empire ...
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mosaic, in art, decoration of a surface with designs made up of closely set, usually variously coloured, small pieces of material such as stone, mineral, glass, tile, or shell. Unlike inlay, in which the pieces to be applied are set into a surface that has been hollowed out to receive the design, mosaic pieces are applied onto a surface that has been prepared with an adhesive. Mosaic also differs from inlay in the size of its components. Mosaic pieces are anonymous fractions of the design and rarely have the dimensions of pieces for intarsia work (fitted inlay usually of wood), whose function is often the rendering of a whole portion of a figure or pattern. Once disassembled, a mosaic cannot be reassembled on the basis of the form of its individual pieces.
Technical insight is the key to both the creation and the appreciation of mosaic, and the technical aspects of the art require special emphasis. There are also significant stylistic, religious, and cultural aspects of mosaic, which has played an important role in Western art and has appeared in other cultures. Although mosaic is an art form that appears in widely separated places and at different times in history, in only one place—Byzantium—and at one time—4th to 14th centuries—did it rise to become the leading pictorial art.
Between mosaic and painting, the art with which it has most in common, there has been a reciprocal influence of varying intensity. In colour and style the earliest known Greek figurative mosaics with representational motifs, which date from the end of the 5th century bce, resemble contemporary vase painting, especially in their outline drawing and use of very dark backgrounds. The mosaics of the 4th century tended to copy the style of wall paintings, as is seen in the introduction of a strip of ground below the figures, of shading, and of other manifestations of a preoccupation with pictorial space. In late Hellenistic times there evolved a type of mosaic whose colour gradations and delicate shading techniques suggest an attempt at exact reproduction of qualities typical of the art of painting.
In Roman imperial times, however, an important change occurred when mosaic gradually developed its own aesthetic laws. Still basically a medium used for floors, its new rules of composition were governed by a conception of perspective and choice of viewpoint different from those of wall decoration. Equally important was a simplification of form brought about by the demand for more expeditious production methods. In the same period, the increasing use of more strongly coloured materials also stimulated the growing autonomy of mosaic from painting. As a means of covering walls and vaults, mosaic finally realized its full potentialities for striking and suggestive distance effects, which surpass those of painting.
The general trend towards stylization—that is, reduction to two-dimensionality—in late antique Roman painting (3rd and 4th centuries ce) may have been stimulated by experimentation with colour in mosaic and particularly by the elimination of many middle tones for the sake of greater brilliance. The central role played at that time by mosaic in church decoration, for which it is particularly well suited, encourages the assumption that the roles had shifted and painting had come under its influence. The strong, sinuous outlines and the absence of shading that came to characterize painting during certain periods of Byzantine and western European art of the Middle Ages may have originated in mosaic technique and use of materials. It is notable, however, that from the Renaissance to the 20th century mosaic was again wholly dependent on painting and its particular forms of illusionism.
In modern mosaic practice, the main tendency is to build on the unique and inimitable qualities of the medium. Although not a few of the works created in the 20th century reveal the influence of painting, figurative or abstract, the art came a long way toward self-realization. By and large the modern mosaic makers share with their medieval predecessors the conviction that there are functions to which the materials of mosaic lend themselves with particular appropriateness.
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In antiquity, mosaics first were made of uncut pebbles of uniform size. The Greeks, who elevated the pebble mosaic to an art of great refinement, also invented the so-called tessera technique. Tesserae (Latin for “cubes” or “dice”) are pieces that have been cut to a triangular, square, or other regular shape so that they will fit closely into the grid of cubes that make up the mosaic surface. The invention of tesserae must have been motivated by a desire to obtain densely set mosaic pictures which could match, in pavements, the splendour of contemporary achievements in painting.
Tesserae vary considerably in size. The finest mosaics of antiquity were made of tesserae cut from glass threads or splinters of stone; ordinary floor decorations consisted of cubes about one centimetre square. Medieval works often display a differentiation in tessera size based on function: areas requiring a wealth of details, faces and hands, for instance, are sometimes set with tesserae smaller than average, while dress and jewelry are occasionally set with very large single pieces.
Stone, therefore, was long dominant, and throughout antiquity the natural colours of stone provided the basic range of tints at the artist’s disposal. They put their mark not only on the earliest Greek works but continued to determine colour schemes far into Roman times. Stone continued to be used in Christian monumental decorations but on a more limited scale and for special effects. In Byzantine mosaics, faces, hands and feet, for example, were set with stone, while cubes of marble, often of coarse crystals, were used to depict woollen garments. Stone was also used for background details (rocks, buildings), probably to bring about particular illusions. Though marble and limestone were ordinarily preferred, in a period when Roman mosaic cultivated a black and white technique, black basalt was widely employed. Marble cubes painted red, probably to substitute for red glass, have been found in many Byzantine mosaics, in 9th-century works at Istanbul, for example.
Because its granular, nonpolished surface is often preferred to the hard brilliance of other materials, stone is also widely used in modern mosaics. At the University of Mexico in Mexico City, for example, the mosaics covering the exterior of the library by Juan O’Gorman (1951–53) and the exterior of the stadium by Diego Rivera (1957) are made with natural stone.
May 12, 2018 · Mosaics are assemblages composed out of tessera (small pieces of glass, stone, or other nature-based materials). When made out of glass, these pieces are typically cut into squares or shaped using special tools. The tiles or fragments are then arranged into patterns, pictures, and other decorative designs that are held together by an adhesive ...
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster / mortar, and covering a surface. [1] Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly popular in the Ancient Roman world. Mosaic today includes not just murals and pavements, but also ...
Jul 25, 2024 · 3. Apply the grout using a spatula. Lay newspaper down on your work surface and place the mosaic on it. Cover the whole mosaic with grout, spreading it with a spatula and filling in the creases between the tiles. The grout should cover the mosaic enough to fill the gaps. Do this outside or in a well ventilated area.
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- Amy Guerrero
A step-by-step guide to the classical rules (or principles) of mosaic making. Enjoy this comprehensive guide to mastering the classical rules of mosaic makin...
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- Helen Miles Mosaics
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Mosaic has been used as a decorative medium for over five thousand years. It was the Islamic mosaics introduced to Spain by the Moors in the eighth century that inspired the twentieth-century Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who arranged pieces of broken glazed tiles with fragments of glass bottles and china plates over walls in the Park Güell and in parts of the cathedral of the Sagrada ...
