MOSAICS

What is a mosaic? Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. Small pieces of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae are used to create a pattern or picture. Tesserae comes from the Latin word, tile, which means to fill the plane with no overlaps and no gaps.

History of Mosaics The history of the mosaic goes back some 4,000 years or more, with the use of terracotta cones pushed point-first into a background to give decoration. Around 200 BC manufactured pieces, tesserae, were being used to give extra detail and color to a work of art. Using small tesserae, sometimes only a few millimetres in size, meant that mosaics could imitate paintings. The first empires to create mosaics were Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Byzantine. Mosaic art in the 21st century represents the greatness of mosaic artists throughout human civilization. Artists today give a new twist to an age-old medium.

How to create a mosaic. First, draw out your design. Second, choose your tesseraes. Make sure you have contrast from your main design and its background. Third, apply some mosaic tile adhesive onto the surface of your board and place the tile onto the base. When placing the tiles, it is very important to leave about 1/8” gap around all the tiles. Once all your tiles are glued to the base, it is time to grout. Fill in the empty areas with the grout. Let it dry, then wipe the tiles clean with water.

Photos of different mosaics.

Project You will choose to design either a fish or a bird mosaic.