Up close and personal with the Lod Mosaic

In the summer of '09, the great Sara Baldwin sent me a link to a story about a Roman mosaic that had been discovered and preserved in Lod, Israel. The image above is the whole mosaic. It's a hi-res, so click it if you want a better view.

The mosaic was enormous, nearly 2,000 square feet and it was in a nearly pristine state. It had been discovered in 1996 and then buried again until 2004. By 2004, the Israeli Antiquities Authority had a plan and in that same year, they put that plan into action.

I have a thing for Roman art and mosaics, I've written about that on this blog a lot. So does Sara and that shared love of ancient mosaics is what drew the two of us together in the first place. I wrote about the Lod mosaic in June, 2009.

I added it to a very long list of things I wanted to see but figured I never would some time after I wrote that post.

At some point this past fall, another great woman and lover of all things Roman, JoAnn Locktov told me that the Lod Mosaic was coming to the US on a tour while the Israeli Antiquities Authority built the museum that will house it eventually. The first stop on that tour is the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The exhibit opened at the end of September and it runs through April 3, 2011. So in what has to be one of the coolest coincidences ever, I went to see the Lod Mosaic on Saturday afternoon.

No matter how many photos of it I'd seen nothing prepared me for it fully. It's significantly larger than I thought it would be and the colors are shockingly bright.

Here are some detail shots I took on Saturday.

Amazing stuff.

The Roman love of tile and mosaic are why were have tile bathrooms and kitchens today by the way. That civilization, more than any other ancient civilization, touches our daily lives almost continuously. Whether the custom in question is birthday cake or wedding rings or Christmas presents or tile bathrooms, the Romans played a role in all of that stuff.

More than any of that though, it's the imagery in Roman mosaics that speaks to me most profoundly.

One of the many things I love about Sara Baldwin and her company, New Ravenna, is their way of taking a page from the ancient Romans and interpreting that style for the here and now. I can't buy a Roman mosaic, no one can really. That's a good thing, surviving artifacts are a resource that belong to everybody. I can however, have a bathroom floor made that will remind me of the Roman floors I've seen and walked on. Here are some samples of New Ravenna's classically-inspired mosaic patterns.

Whether it's from Lod or from Exmore, VA; it's all pretty amazing stuff. If you'll be in New York between now and April, please spend a few hours at the Metropolitan Museum.

Interesting mosaics from VetroVivo

VetroVivo is an Italian company with a new idea.

Their mosaics made their debut at Cersaie this year and I just found out about them the other day.

Their glass mosaics come in 18 individual shapes and there are 53 colors available in the entire collection. These mosaics have to be designed and they have to be set piece by piece.

It's an interesting idea and I like the fact that the grout plays as big a role in the appearance of these mosaics as do the glass pieces.

But in order to pull off some of the designs shown on their website, you'd end up skim coating an entire wall or surface with grout. You'd use a sanded grout obviously but I'm left wondering how well  wide swaths of skim-coated grout hold up to use and time.

Aside from that, these mosaics are really beautiful. Don't you think?

Would you install these VetroVivo mosaics in your own home?

Remember the shoe tub?

Remember the shoe tub? Here's the post in case you don't know what I'm talking about.

It was that show tub that convinced me that Sicis, the Italian mosaic company, takes a model car approach to their marketing. By that I mean that they use their mosaics in unconventional ways to get people talking about them. There's no cynicism involved int his. They spend a lot of money on these projects. Every one of them is well-designed, well-made and for sale.

So knowing that, I wasn't surprised when I found out that Sicis is designing, manufacturing and selling furniture. All of these pieces highlight an integrated mosaic and it's interesting to keep that in mind when you see these fanciful chairs.

I'm not to worked up about any of these pieces and I can't shake the thought that any furniture they sell will be gravy. I'm convinced that having me write about Sicis mosaics is the whole reason this furniture exists.

What do you guys think? Are they just a company that's into a whole bunch of stuff or are these Sicis side projects part of a marketing plan? Do you think it's effective?

Autumnal re-runs: A trip to New Ravenna

This post ran originally on 8 January 2010 and it recounts a trip I took to New Ravenna Mosaics about a month prior. I ran a post this week about some new stuff New Ravenna's been working on and it reminded me again how impressed I was by my experiences as their guest last year.

via Flickr

Across the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, MD sits the Delmarva Peninsula, so named for the three states that divide it. There's the whole of Delaware on the eastern side. It's flanked by Maryland to the west and the bottom 70 or so miles of that spit of land make up Virginia's Eastern Shore.

via Flickr

US 13 runs down the spine of the Eastern Shore and to drive south on it is to leave behind the pace and the hassles inherent in living in the rest of the northeastern US. The miles pass wide expanses of fertile fields dotted with pine and oak flatwoods. Ocassional, orderly towns come into view and there's a Spartan efficiency to them.

It's clear that for a lot of these towns, their best years are behind them. There's no real sense of loss that's readily apparent though. History runs very deep on the Eastern Shore, and that kind of history leaves a people with the steely resolve that even though the good times are in the past, they'll come back.

About two-thirds of the way down the peninsula sits the town of Exmore, VA; and in what was once an Arrow shirt factory, New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone creates some of the most beautiful work in glass and stone available anywhere.

New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone is the largest employer in Northhampton County. The 100 people who arrive at that old shirt factory every morning are artisans in every sense of the word and their workplace is an atelier much more than something that could be called a factory.

Sara Baldwin founded New Ravenna in 1991. She started as an artist with a passionate vision to bring beauty to the world through the medium of stone tesserae. That vision still burns as brightly as ever and her enthusiasm, her love, for the medium infuses everything about New Ravenna.

While it's true that New Ravenna utilizes an impressive assortment of water jets, tumblers and wet saws; at the end of the day they create their art the way mosaicists always have. Someone considers a piece of stone, cuts it into the shape she needs and then sets it in place. Repeat 10,000 times.

19 years ago, New Ravenna started out as a woman with a vision. 19 years later, New Ravenna is 100 people with a shared vision.

Look through their entire collection on their website and follow New Ravenna's latest developments through Sara Balwin's blog. Oh, and if you ever find yourself in Exmore, VA; stop in for a visit. If you can't make it to Exmore, you can find a bit of New Ravenna's Exmore at distributors far and wide.

Great new patterns from New Ravenna Mosaics

It is no secret that I have a thing for marble, mosaics and anything made by New Ravenna Mosaics. Well New Ravenna just released some new mosaic patterns this week and I think they're spectacular. The pattern above and below is called Ganesha and it's shown here in honed Calacatta marble.

As is the case with the rest of their patterns, you can order any New Ravenna mosaic pattern in any stone or art glass color they have available. Trust me, the size of their materials library is staggering and they love made to order work.

The next pattern is called Jacqueline Vine and it's shown here in Thassos marble.

What's unique about these patterns is that they're all water jetted of course, but where they get interesting is that the grout lines are an integral part of the design. Jacqueline Vine gets a lot of its impact from the sanded grout that surrounds the pieces of Thassos. As stunning as it would look on a wall, Jacqueline Vine on a floor would be a real knock out.

Raj is shown here in polished Calacatta and honed Thassos.

I love how the two stones add a subtle tonal variation that accents the textures in the patterns.

It's a terrific, interesting effect. It's glamorous but not fussy and that's a tough act to pull off.

Finally, here's one of my favorite patterns from their extensive catalog. This is Octopus's Garden and I saw this one with my own eyes last April at Coverings 2010.

Octopus's Garden is shown here in a white art glass but as I mentioned earlier, it can be made with any of the materials New Ravenna can get their hands on.

Just as was the case with the Jacquline Vine, Octopus's Garden pattern is utterly dependent on the grout lines to define the shapes. Here's a close up of the seahorse.

There are a number of creatures in Octopus's Garden and you can mix and match them at will. Have a thing for seahorses? Then get it in all seahorses. Starfish? Sand dollars? If you can imagine it, they can do it.

Art and commerce can co-exist and New Ravenna Mosaics is living proof of that. You can find the rest of their collection on their website, but you'll only see these great new patterns here.

I love 'em all. Which one's your favorite?

Liberty from Trend USA proves that recycling is beautiful

At Cersaie, the international tile showcase held every year in Bologna, Trend USA launched a significant enhancement to its already impressive Liberty collection.

The glass used in the Liberty collection is 75% post-consumer recycled glass and the collection's now available in 14 color forms.

Each sheeted mosaic is hand cut, which gives it an imperfect leavening to the geometry of the pattern as a whole. The effect is subtle and hand made yet thoroughly modern at the same time.

It's patterns like Liberty that get me thinking about all the ways other than backsplashes where a dramatic mosaic can set the tone of a room. As the photos here show, this is not tile you'd want to hide.

Trend USA's products are available through showrooms worldwide. With the Liberty collection, Trend USA proves yet again that recycling and sustainable designs are beautiful.