Mosaics: Resurgence of an Ancient Art Form

James Duncan is a Decorati Partner and author of “A Well Traveled Aesthetic.”

Mosaics were one of the first forms of decorative art. As early as the second millennium B.C., geometric patterns in colored stones and shells decorated temples in Mesopotamia. It was in 4th century B.C. Greece where pictorial mosaics were first created. Thereafter, the genre spread throughout the Aegean, east into Persia and the Romans then diffused the art form throughout the Mediterranean basin. Some of the finest examples were found in the North African city of Carthage and can now be seen in the Bardo Museum in Tunis.

Mosaic pictures of everyday life, including maps are an important source of ancient historical knowledge. Unlike today where mosaics are usually found in the most expensive and sophisticated houses, even modest houses were decorated with mosaics.

Mosaics decorated the ceilings, walls and floors of houses, temples and public buildings. Some were purely decorative, while others commemorated the gods. And some served functional purposes, such as the ubiquitous “CaviCanem” [Beware of the Dog] mosaics at the threshold of Roman houses.

Mosaics were generally preferred over paint which was highly unstable and the level of sophistication of these pre-Christian mosaics was often extremely high.

With the rise of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christian images predominated. Innovations in glazing and glassmaking provided more brilliant materials with which to enrich traditional mosaic design tradition. There were numerous centers of mosaic production around the Mediterranean, but the most famous was Ravenna, which reigned supreme from the fifth to seventh centuriesA.D.

The long age of the mosaic, which began four thousand years ago, largely ended during the Renaissance.
As new, more durable paints permitted the creation of long lasting frescos,mosaics dropped out of fashion. Beautiful and sophisticated as they were, they could not compete with the detail and subtlety that could be created with the brush. For this reason, mosaics have remained marginal to mainstream artistic production ever since.

Brief revivals of the art form include the Art Nouveau period especially in Barcelona where Gaudi famously created fanciful undulating forms decorated with waste pieces such as broken pottery, tiles and dishes.
Today mosaics are typically found in outdoor spaces, bathrooms and kitchens and while they are seen as a beautiful form of art, they are art for spaces with running water!

Arguably, the premier center of mosaic production in the United States today is found on Virginia’s eastern shore. New Ravenna, founded and directed by Sarah Baldwin employs over 100 artisans and designers. The company produces custom-made mosaic designs in stone and glass. The tiles are hand or water-jet cut to give either a rough or razor-sharp edge to the tile and assembled by artisans into everything from borders to medallions, fields, and murals.

During the past year I designed a line for New Ravenna. Itis a crossover from my rug line. The designs were chosen to resonate with different epochs and cultural traditions. Indus, in its abstraction represents the earliest west Asian non-representational tradition in mosaic design, but also its bronze cruciform pattern stands for the later Christian theme that dominated mosaic production for a thousand years. Likewise the tree of life pattern is a theme common to both Christian and pre-Christian design as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite designs of the nineteenth century. Ikebana pays homage to traditional Japanese design, albeit in a distinctly non-Japanese medium, and also to the sea, as the pattern has the ambiguity of being both of the sea and of the land. And finally Simone references the romantic designs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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