MOSAICA

[Musivarius]

I'm back from Archeon now,thanks for posting up the photos Latinus,and yes Ravenna does have the mosaics of Justinian.Theres not much early Roman except for a few pieces of sculpture etc. in the museum,but the Byzantine modaics more than make up for it.<br>
The mosaic school in Ravenna specialises in training to make piece for piece copies of ancient mosaics ,the other main schools in Italy are the Vatican for micromosaics(17th-18th Century) and I think it's Spilimbergo for contempary stuff.<br>
The mosaics I do at the shows are all done using the direct method,I remain unconvinced about the argument for the Romans using paper or cloth for the reverse method.The piece you see me working on on the bench is an emblemata or inset.These have been found in sevaral locations,the piece being set on a tray of marble or terracotta,then placed on the floor and the rest of the mosaic set around it directly onto the floor.The advantage in this being that you can prefabricate pieces to take to the site and avoid spending too long on you knees.Winter projects for the workshops perhaps?<br>
At home I use the double reverse method taught at the school in Ravenna.It's a bit long winded but if anyones intrested I'll post it up later.<br>
It's not practicle to take large floor sections to the shows so I have a few demo pieces such as the half finished geometric piece to show guidelines,the emblemata,and some scaled down figure pieces.10mm tesserae cubes are the norm,but the problem with this is you end up with a lot of machine cut edges visible,look closesly at the porpose with the grey centre band.Even getting the marble as rods(ie 30cmx1cm depth x3cm width) does not get away from this.If you cut the pieces further using a hammer and hardie down to 3-5mm the effect is much better,as in the cupid on a sea monster mosaic in the photos.<br>
I have a few projects for next year but I may need to end up getting a van!Enjoy the course Jenny I,ll be interested to hear what you think of it. Lawrence <p></p><i></i>