Mosaic squares

Usage examples of tesserae.

Five hundred years ago mosaicists were laying reversed sheets of tesserae on walls and floors in Rhodias, Mylasia, Baiana.

Crispin was just then attempting the task of making muddy brown tesserae appear like the brilliant glowing of Heladikos's sacred fire, high up on a scaffold under the dome.

Up on the high scaffold, Caius Crispus of Varena was setting reddish-veined marble from Pezzelana flat into the soft, sticky lime coat on the dome, interspersed with the best of the tesserae they'd managed to salvage from the miserable sheets of glass.

With tesserae worthy of the name, and perhaps a sanctuary dome designed with windows enough and-by the god's grace-good, clear glass for those windows, he might.

Now, as he dressed quickly in the twilight chill, he found himself engaged in slotting pieces of information like tesserae within his mind to make a picture.

He dreamt of Sarantium, of making a mosaic there, with bril­liant tesserae and all the shining jewels he needed: images on a towering dome of an oak tree in a grove, lightning bolts in a livid sky.

A figure as absolute and terrifying as the bison had been: another dark, massive head, against the pale, golden tesserae of the sun behind him.

He knew, intuitively, that this precise pairing of tesserae would exist nowhere else on the dome.

I'd need to be up on a scaffold to be certain, but it seems some tesserae have dis­lodged there as well.

When we have set tesserae on some sanctuary or palace domes in Batiara it has been our good fortune-Martinian's and mine-to achieve pleasing effects by being aware of when and where the moons will lend their light through the seasons.

Caius Crispus, what is your opinion as to the new reverse transfer method of lay­ing tesserae in sheets in the workshop?

It enables a more uniform setting of the glass or stone pieces where that is desired, and relieves much of the need for speed in set­ting tesserae directly before the setting bed dries.

Nothing on Jad's earth can do what a mosaicist can do on a dome if he sets the tesserae directly on the surface.

Gesius laid thin, proprietary fingers on Crispin's shoulder and smoothly guided him from the room, across the tesserae of the Imperial hunt, past the silver trees and the jew­elled birds in the branches and the avidly watchful, silken figures of the Sarantine court.

What have you decided about the merits and meth­ods of angling tesserae in the setting bed?