It Must Have Taken Ages To Make - Micro Mosaic

Imagine are living in the late 1800s. You are a man on the grand tour and you have been enjoying Italy. Rome is amazing, full of beautiful artworks and amazing historic sites. There is also plenty to spend your money on. You have to buy appropriate souvenirs to take home, but you also enjoy buying the occasional small item to send home to your Mother, Father and Sisters. This morning you purchased some beautiful micro mosaic crosses which will be perfect for your sisters – they will love showing them off to their friends!

When I showed the children this little cross, filled with tiny mosaic pieces, they were amazed. They thought it must have been very difficult for people to create such intricate patterns on such a small scale, and thought each piece ‘must have taken ages’. The children were also taken with the colours used, because as far as they are concerned, ‘old jewellery is usually really simple and pretty, but this is really cool and colourful’.

Although there are ‘micro mosaics’ which have been found dating right back to the 3^rd century BC, most micro mosaic jewellery dates to the 19^th or 20^th century when they were most popular. The process used in creating most micro-mosaics was discovered by Alessio Mattioli who was a glass worker in Rome in the 18^th century. He was experimenting with creating different coloured glass which could be spun into thin threads and used to create beautiful pieces in miniature. He called these ‘smalti filati’ and this technique eventually made it possible to make tiny glass tiles called tesserae which were then used to create the micro mosaics.

Micro mosaics began to grow in popularity in the 18^th century, but it was during the 19^th century that they really became ‘the thing’ to have. They were particularly common as tourist souvenirs, brought home by fashionable women who visited the continent and particularly Rome or Venice. This was an era when the ‘grand tour’ was not only popular, but reasonably common with the rich and famous. Rich families, particularly their sons and daughters, would travel around Europe, seeing the sights (many of them antiquities), and of course spending their money. Italy, and of course Rome, was a very important tourist destination on the grand tour and Roman glass artists soon began to create stunning, small pieces for the tourists to buy for themselves, or for their families back home. Micro mosaics were one of these. Many of the pieces reflected sites which the tourists would have visited, with tiny mosaic pictures featuring the famous Roman antiquities or even Pompeii, but others were created showing simply floral motifs or, as the piece I showed the children, in the shape of a crucifix.