A custom mosaic of my very own, courtesy of Trend USA

Trend USA, an Italian mosaic producer with offices around the world, announced a new process for making mosaics recently. It's something they're calling an elaboration, and to achieve it they use proprietary CAD-based software to assign colors and patterns to replicate in mosaic form photos, fabrics or other works of art.

Sometimes it's easier to show than to explain. So here's an image of a fabric.

And here's its elaboration as a Trend USA mosaic.

It's been assigned a different color way of course, but notice too that it's made with cut mosaic pieces. That's an ancient process for achieving rounded shapes called tessellatum tesserae. The same proces is sometimes called a cut mosaic. In addition to tessellatum tesserae, Trend USA's new process can be used to create mosaics using whole 3/8", 5/8" and 3/4" mosaic tiles as well.

In the example below, there's a photo in the top right corner. Below it are the full image of the photo as a mosaic created in 5/8" tiles and then there's a detail of the mosaic. I'm uploading these photos today in high resolution. Click on them and you'll see the detail. It's a small price to pay for the slower loading times.

Trend USA asked me to submit a photograph of my own to use as an example of this process. Trend USA is represented by a friend of mine and she's well aware of my near obsession with Fibonacci Sequences and she suggested that I submit an artistic example of one to use for my custom mosaic.

My favorite video of the last year is Nature by Numbers, a short film by Cristóbal Vila that uses three examples of natural geometry.





I have a still from Vila's film and so I sent this image to Samara Gould, Trend's Artistic Design Consultant. I wanted to test this new process, so I picked an image specifically because I thought it would be a challenge. The transparent wings alone would make me sweat if I were Samara. She accepted my image without hesitation. In fact, she was excited to give it a go.

I told her that I would love to see that dragonfly elaborated as a mosaic in a size somewhere around 10 feet wide by five feet tall.

Samara used 3/8" tiles and by using that smaller size, she created a mosaic that would be readable from four feet away. That's pretty good for something this large.

If I were to buy this dragonfly mosaic, it would come to me in sheets 28 tiles wide by 28 tiles tall and all my installer would have to do is take the sheets out of a box and attach them to my wall. That's pretty slick.

In addition to Trend USA's new custom program, they have pioneered the use of recycled glass in glass tile and their products have recycled content percentages that range from 55% to 78%. You can read more about the company and their commitment to sustainable practices on their website here.

I've seen many custom mosaic services that use a computer to assign colors and patterns before, but I've never seen one that results in this level of detail and clarity. A process such as this is yet another reason to keep an eye on Trend USA and Trend Worldwide. Thank you Samara and thank you Trend.