There's more to stone mosaics than the dreaded tumbled marble

Here's some really cool takes on stone mosaic from Walker Zanger and Ann Sacks. More proof that if you find yourself in the tile aisle in a Home Depot, it's a good idea to keep right on walking.

Cool ceramic mosaics

The push toward all things glass mosaic has opened up a space for ceramic tile mosaics to stage a comeback of their own. Check out these beauties from Mod Walls, Ann Sacks and Walker Zanger.

These first seven photos are from Ann Sacks, who in my mind sets the standard for ceramic tile. Man, I am madly, deeply in love with Ann Sacks.

These are from Mod Walls who are taking ceramic tile into some really interesting and welcome directions.

Walker Zanger is great for putting new twists on classic designs.

New glass mosaics

I'm out of town, but through the power of the Internet I'm still able to keep right on posting as though I were still sitting at home. Amazing.

Anyhow, I notice that I get a lot of traffic from people looking for inspirational photos of glass mosaics. When I'm looking for some inspiration along those lines, there are three sources I turn to time and again. They are Mod Walls, Ann Sacks and Walker-Zanger. I think those three have some of the best websites out there for seeing this sort of thing in action. Here are a couple of great rooms I found on Mod walls and all of them feature glass tile mosaics.

As you can tell from how varied these things are, there really aren't any rules except the single overriding caution of life in general; just because you can doesn't mean you should. Got a question about a particular image? Just ask and I'll chew off your ear with an answer.

This is what I meant about the difference between can and should.

Stone mosaics of timeless beauty

I received an e-mail from a woman yesterday whom I met at the stone and tile show a couple of weeks ago. She works for a firm called Minos Stone. Minos stone is an Israeli-based stone and mosaic fabricator and they do work all over the world. Beautiful, amazing work at that.

Toward the end of my day at the Orange County Convention Center, I was approaching overload. I thought I'd seen all I needed to see and was concentrating more on where to go for dinner than anything else when I saw this impressionist mosaic. It was huge and I'd never seen anything so expressive yet so rustic at the same time. This face has haunted me since I saw it and I'm grateful to have a photo of it now. It's a pleasure to post it here. There aren't many things in the world that can leave me at a loss for words, but this mosaic portrait is one of them. When I stood in front of it, it looked brand new and thousands of years old at the same time. It had an amazing effect on me. Still does in fact.

Minos Stone does some really wild stuff and they make mosaics they way they've been made since the art came to be thousands of years ago. Individual pieces of stone are fit together to make an image. It's a simple idea but it's incredibly difficult to pull off effectively.

The second image is a handmade piece Minos did and it's called "Olive Tree." The beauty of a real mosaic is that the image is best seen from a distance. Yet, the level of detail up close is so captivating you can't help get as close to them as possible, even though the overall image may be distorted or lost in so doing.

I've included a couple of Minos' detail shots of the Olive Tree so you can get a feel for what I mean. Add to all of this that they're using natural pieces of stone.

To the right is a close up of the leaves and olives toward the outer edge of the tree.

Here is a clear shot of the trunk and the background.

Here are the leaves and sky from the upper right corner.

As impressed as I am by Minos' mosaics, spend some time on their website and check out what they do with antique stone floors, stone vases and vessels. Bravo!

Mein gott im himmel! That's a stone mosaic!

The image to the left is a mosaic made by a San Francisco company called Exact Mosaics (http://www.exactmosaics.com/). It is an uncut tile mosaic made from 5/8" squares of natural marble.

I have never seen anything like this and I'm pretty much struck dumb by it. Exact Mosaics uses a pattern-recognition software to interpret a scanned image. The software actually selects the placement of the differently toned squares of marble that make up the whole piece. I mentioned yesterday that achieving curved shapes was something that was possible only with cut tile. Well, these people have found a way to do it with uncut squares and in a natural material to boot. Unbelievable.

The second photo is a close-up of the top left corner of the image and you can see the individual squares. The Romans mastered the art of the mosaic and since then, people have been using pretty much the same techniques. True, the Romans didn't have glass tile the way we do now, but even most glass tile gets used the way the ancients used colored stone. These guys on the other hand, have created something entirely new. Got to their website and gawk.

More more more mosaics mosaics mosaics

I had another big conversation with a client this afternoon about the wonderful, accessible world of glass tile mosaics. I am suggesting that this particular client forgo the usual accent wall in a great room and that she instead use a glass mosaic on that expansive wall. I cannot get enough of glass tile mosaics, and seeing them used on a huge scale is a thrill beyond compare. Please excuse my hyperbole.

There's a company in Oregon called Hakatai (http://www.hakatai.com/). Hakatai sells mosaic tile by the truckload, they sell to the public and will do custom work using fine-cut, cut and uncut glass tile.

Uncut glass tile mosaics use the same size square tile over their entire design. A lot of times, uncut mosaics stick to geometric patterns. However, by varying the colors of the individual tiles, a mosaicist can convey an alarming amount of detail and subtlety. Uncut mosaics are interesting because they only look right when viewed from a short distance.

Simple cut mosaics rely on the square mosaic tile shape for the lion's share of their form, but use cut pieces of those squares to add shapes to a design a mosaicist can't achieve with small square --usually curves.

Fine cut mosaics are the most complicated and labor-intensive of these three categories. they abandon the square tile shape all together. Cut mosaics don't rely on distance for you to be able to see them. They look as good up close as they do from far away. My friends at Hakatai will make you a custom, cut mosaic based on a supplied photo or other image too. Love Van Gogh's "Starry Night?" Do you have a pressing need to have it rendered in glass tile in your foyer? Talk to the kids at Hakatai.