Micromosaics

Mark D. Ruffner © 2013

My great-grandmother, Emma Breguet, died at a young age, and little of what belonged to her is left. What remains reveals that she gravitated to all things inlaid, including micromosaics. Today I thought I'd share one of her paperweights, apparently a souvenir of Rome.

click to enlarge

Below are the individual sights, and you can click on each of them to enlarge the images. (Because the black marble base has many hairline scratches, I've obscured them so that you might focus more easily on these little masterpieces.)

click to enlarge  |  Temple of Hercules Victor

click to enlarge  |  The Colosseum

click to enlarge  |  Forum Romanum

click to enlarge  |  The Pantheon

click to enlarge  |  Vatican Square

For larger mosaics, glass chips called smalti, below, are used (smalto, singular). For micromosaics, smalti is heated and drawn out into long threads called filati, which in that drawing out become very thin. It is this filati that is used in micromosaics, and it is indeed thin; you can see where filati is missing in areas of the Pantheon, above, and that slight deterioration is essentially a flaking.

mosaicartsupply.com

Above is smalti, huge in comparison to the filati that would be used in micromosaics.

Because the filati pieces are so tiny, beautiful gradations can be accomplished. Look, for example, at how the skies in all the images above gradate to the horizon, and then see what a stunning effect that creates in the first image of the entire plaque.

click to enlarge  |  http://www.lacma.org/search/node/micromosaics 

Above is one of the most spectacular of micromosaics, an image of the Colosseum measuring 18¾ x 25⅞. It's on extended loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Gilbert Collection. This micromosaic was made circa 1850.
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Greek Keys No. 6

detail of a photograph by Guillaume de Laubier  |  The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), known as The Iron Pope, came from a poor family from the village of Montalto. The family name was Peretti, so Pope Sixtus V designed his crest to include a lion holding a branch of pears. The image above is a painting of the pope which hangs in the Vatican library that bears his name. Notice that above the painting is a Greek key that incorporates pears. I've recreated the key below.

And now from the Vatican to the Royal Family. Here is the Meander Tiara, which was worn by Princess Alice of Greece, mother of the Britain's Prince Philip.

orderofsplendor.blogspot.com

Princess Alice of Greece   |   alexanderpalace.org

The tiara was a wedding gift from Princess Alice to her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, who in turn gave it to Princess Anne.

An 18th century decorative frame

is shown with details of the keys.

Source

This is a Louis XV table of ebony and inlay.

Here, I've recreated the key design of a Roman mosaic floor found in Britain. To see and learn about the Sea God Mosaic, featuring a portrait of Oceanus, go here.

My entire series of Greek key designs can be found on my side bar — just look for the brown stele.
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