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Mosaicist
Creates art by assembling small pieces of stone, glass, or ceramic into images and patterns.
Did you know?
The Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii, made around 120-100 BC, is built from an estimated 1.5 to 4 million tiny stone tiles called tesserae.
How subjects help
- Art & Design: Place tiny pieces of stone and glass so their colours blend into a picture from afar.
- History: Study ancient Roman floor mosaics to learn patterns and methods that have lasted centuries.
- Mathematics: Work out how many tiles a wall needs and fit repeating shapes into a neat pattern.
A famous name
Boris Anrep: Russian-born artist who made the mosaic floors of London's National Gallery between 1928 and 1952.
Try it yourself: Test a tile pattern that fits together
- Fold your paper in half three times, then unfold it. The creases make eight equal boxes.
- In the first box, draw two simple shapes that fit together with no gaps, like a zigzag strip and its opposite.
- Draw the same two shapes in every box, so each one meets the shapes next door.
- Colour one shape in each colour, then look at the whole sheet. Are there gaps or edges that don't line up? Fix them in your next go.
Tile makers, mosaicists and printmakers test a repeating design on paper first, because once the tiles are fired or the printing block is carved, mistakes are hard to fix.
Adapted from V&A: Design and make your own Islamic tile and printed pattern.
Also try: Find the repeat in a patterned fabric.
Known for it in
Italy, Turkey, Morocco, Greece, Portugal