Alex's Historical Fiction

Have hardie, will mosaic

Feeling much better today. My face has stopped 'burning' and it looks like it's now going to settle into lots of dry skin (yummy - not!)

But it means I felt up to playing with the hammer & hardie (for making tesserae for mosaics), and the sun managed to come out, so I was able to do this outside (see photo above). Made lots of mess, but think I'm getting the hang of it. Having emailed Lawrence of Legio II Augusta previously, I'd got lots of tips, plus my own experience with recording/beating up tile helped, I suspect.

The material breaks where it wants too. I found that certain types of tile fabrics are more likely to be easier to work with than others. Chalk is great - it's so fine grained, that it'll split more or less where you want it to. Sandstone shatters too easily, so a good accurate hit is essential. Also had some Italian marble sticks, which broke pretty well. However, mostly I am planning to work in stuff local to Britain, so tile and limestone is what I'm after. This doesn't come in pre-cut sticks, so I reckon I'll have to be spending a fair amount of time whacking it heavily to break it down into manageable pieces.

Just came across reports of this mosaic found in Caesarea Looks lovely (the birds are somewhat better picked out than the Rudston ones!) and was made around the 5th century!

posted by Alex Bordessa @ Sunday, April 17, 2005