Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly cubic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, are used to create a pattern or picture.

Artists from Rome, Medieval Europe, Islam, and contemporary Mexico have used mosaic to create art.

History :

• Goes back more than 4,000 years; early Sumerians and Ancient Egyptians used mosaics to decorate walls, floors, and pillars.
• Early examples used terra cotta cones pushed point-first into a background.
• Greeks used pebbles to create detailed scenes of people and animals into pavements.
• Later, Greeks manufactured pieces (called “tesserae”) to give extra color and detail to their art, imitating paintings:

Romans used mosaics to celebrate their gods, domestic themes, and geometric designs.

Islamic mosaic and tile art used stone glass and ceramic. Unlike the Greeks and Romans, their art was mostly geometric and mathematical.

In the Art Noveau period, mosaics created from found objects: waste tiles, broken crockery, shells, and more became popular in Spain and spread throughout the world. A spectacular example is the La Maison Picassiette, one man’s work between 1938 ad 1964 near Paris, France.

Contemporary Mosaics