The Italian circular table
For a number of years this table was hidden behind the door in the billiard room where most visitors simply walked past it. It is now in a prominent position in the drawing room where a vistor's attention can be drawn to it. There are five pictures of Roman Ruins set with a malachite border.
The guide book says they are pietra dure which is not quite true although they are tesselations or micro-mosaics. With the naked eye a slight granularity can be seen in the pictures, particularly in the skies. A hand lens showed that the pictures were composed of particles which were thought to be small coloured glass beads (ballotini). However enlarged photographs reveal the pictures are composed of glass tesserae. These are not spherical but oblong. They are created by softening glass so that it can be pulled out into a long thread which is flattened on a surface. The glass is allowed to cool and then cracked or cut into lots of small pieces. Glasses of different colours are used. Byzantine artists used to sandwich gold leaf between two tesserae when creating icons. The tiny fragments are then arranged to form the picture. The craftsman here is working to a tiny scale and yet most pieces are perfectly aligned. Once the whole mosaic is formed it is reheated to a temperature sufficient to allow the tesserae to fuse to each other so the resulting mosaic is really a single piece of glass and quite stable. Below are the individual mosaics. I thank Chris Purvis for the photographs. Roman Forum
Arch of Constantine
Colosseum
Temple of Vesta
Pantheon
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