stained glass&mozaic

photo mosaic gold

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PROCESSION OF FOLK Glass Mosaic, Subway Station, Bronx, New York –

jag9889

Road Kill mosaic – moesache

Subway Mosaic New York – KaDeWeGirl
Check out the Mosaic Art Source Group Slideshow

A mosaic of The Virgin Mary – Justin Ramsden

Mosaico, Detalhes – Francisco (Gifted)

Rome Mosaic – Outbox

Mosaic Stone “believe” – Herzstucke

Bathing Beauty mosaic – Barb Keith

With over 800 members & more than 8,000 mosaic photos…

8th Street Station Mosaic Brooklyn subway – alan2onion

Magic Kingdom @ Walt Disney World – dionisio

groppi’s mosaic – cairo, egypt – madmonk

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happy face mosaic – h_dps

photo: Stone ‏

2011-09-19T04:29:00.000-07:00

Morning photo: Neolithics

Building blocks …

A stone arch window in the wall of Ali Pasha's catle overlooks the Albanian city of Butrint.

SUMMIT COUNTY —Stone is such a fundamental part of the human experience that an entire age was named after it, coinciding with the emergence of Homo sapiens as tool-using animals.
Though we’re now living in the age of information and technology, we’re still surrounded by structures that were built of stone thousands of years ago — cathedrals, walls, spiritual sites — that will probably remain long after the last computer chip sizzles into oblivion.
At our worst, we use stone as a symbol of power and control; to imprison, enslave, and in the worst case, to kill our fellow man. It’s no wonder stone figures so prominently in some of the essential mythologies and religions of various cultures, from David and Goliath, Uluru and Medusa, to the stone figures on Easter Island.
So how about a definition: The hard, solid, nonmetallic mineral matter of which rock is made, esp. as a building material.”
And here’s another, from Merriam-Webster online: 1: a concretion of earthy or mineral matter: a (1) : such a concretion of indeterminate size or shape (2) : rock b : a piece of rock for a specified function: as (1) : a building block (2) : a paving block (3) : a precious stone : gem (4) : gravestone (5) : grindstone (6) : whetstone (7) : a surface upon which a drawing, text, or design to be lithographed is drawn or transferred.
Today’s photo essay was prepared for the #FriFotos Twitter chat started by @EpsteinTravels. The weekly social media gathering features a different theme each week. It’s become one of the liveliest venues on the web, with hundreds of travelers and photographers sharing their interpretations of each week’s topic. I wasn’t sure how many stone-related photos I’d be able find in the archives that are worth posting, but in the end, there was quite a trove of interesting shots.

This piece of volcanic rock is part of a tuya at Brown Bluff, Antarctica. It's one of very few places in the world where a volcano erupted underneath an ice sheet.

Stone is a fundamental building block for walls and houses all over the world. This rooftop scene is in Brignoles, France.

Stone remembrance.

A city of stone at the World Heritage site in Butrint, Albania.

Giant redwood stumps turned to stone at Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado.

A stone facade inside a sacred Maya cave in Belize. Note the pottery in the lower left corner.

1,000-year-old Maya stone pottery in Aktun Tunichil Muknal Cave in Belize.

Stone ruins in Butrint, Albania.

The towering stone walls of Castell dell"Ovo in Naples, Italy.

The stone facade of Cap Roux, near the town of Cassis, France.

Stone funny face near Montezuma, Colorado.

A Byzantine mosaic in Butrint, Albania -- made of stone, of course.

A piece of the Berlin Wall.

History of the Mosaic

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The earliest known examples of mosaics made of different materials were found at a temple building in Abra,Mesopotamia, and are dated to the second half of 3rd millennium BC. They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory. Excavations at Susa and Choqa Zanbil show evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC.[1] However, mosaic patterns were not used until the times of Sassanid Empire and Roman influence.

Mosaics of the 4th century BC are found in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae and they enriched the floors of Hellenistic villas, and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europos. The 4th century BC mosaic of The Beauty of Durrës discovered in Durrës, Albania in 1916, is a rare example of expressionism in portrait during the ancient world. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across north Africa, in places such as Carthage, and can still be seen in the extensive collection in Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. In Rome, Nero and his architects used mosaics to cover the surfaces of walls and ceilings in the Domus Aurea, built 64 AD.

The mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily are the largest collection of late Roman mosaics in situ in the world, and are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The large villa rustica, which was probably owned by Emperor Maximian, was built largely in the early 4th century. The mosaics were covered and protected for 700 years by a landslide that occurred in the 12th century. The most important pieces are the Circus Scene, the 64 m long Great Hunting Scene, the Little Hunt, the Labours of Hercules and the famous Bikini Girls, showing women exercising in modern-looking bikinis. The peristyle, the imperial apartments and the thermae were also decorated with ornamental and mythological mosaics. Other important examples of Roman mosaic art in Sicily were unearthed on the Piazza Vittoria in Palermo where two houses were discovered. The most important scenes there depicted Orpheus, Alexander the Great's Hunt and the Four Seasons.

Mosaics of girls in bikinis at the Villa Romana

.Late roman mosaics at Villa Romana La Olmeda (Palencia, Spain)

In 1913, Zliten mosaic, a Roman mosaic, famous for its many scenes from gladiatorial contests, hunting and everyday life was discovered in the Libyan town of Zliten. In 2000 archaeologists working in Leptis Magna, Libya uncovered a 30 ft length of five colorful mosaics created during the 1st or 2nd century AD. The mosaics show a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue, staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a bath house within a Roman villa. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of mosaic art ever seen — a "masterpiece comparable in quality with the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii

What is mosaic

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At the most simple definition, mosaic is "a picture or other design constructed from smaller pieces". As well as the subject and style of the design, it is the choice of materials, plus the skill in creating and placing the pieces that contribute to the personal, artistic and practical value of the mosaic.

Mosaics can be

A medium and expression of creativity
Fine art
Public art
Integrated into architecture, indoors and outdoors
Mosaics, ceramics and tiles
Tiles and mosaics are so closely connected it can be hard to make distinctions. Geometric tile arrangements are mosaics, and many mosaics are made of tiles, whether glass or ceramic. Often the tiles are cut, shaped, patterned or decorated. They may be purpose-made for the mosaic.
If you get interested in mosaic, you're likely to be interested in tiles and ceramics (such as architectural ceramics), brickwork patterns, flooring patterns (such as Cosmati work) as well.
will help you explore and discover mosaic. There are plenty of examples of these related arts too, to take your interest further.

Compare and contrast - How does mosaic relate to some other art forms and crafts?
Painting – At first sight, not a great deal in common perhaps. Mosaic was often chosen as an alternative to painted frescos in Byzantine buildings. Much later, the style of painting known as Pointillism, most associated with Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891), used dots of paint, rather than brushstrokes (see picture, source: Wikipedia). Pointillists used a limited range of colours, but had discovered that, side-by-side with other dots, these colours would be blended by the viewer's eye into other colours, giving a special vibrancy to the work. The painter Marc Chagal (1887–1985) designed extensively for mosaic murals. Ultimately, individual placement of pieces within a mosaic can be as delicate as the brush strokes of a master painter.