Mada's Wave

Mada's Wave is a creation of Mathilde Lecut. She reproduced one of her Black and White drawings of waves and flowers.

Mada's Wave is using Golden Travertine. In a rather unusual way, the grout here is used as a major component of the piece. It is not only used to fill up the interstices between tesserae, but as major part of the  piece. 

Work in Process...

Reversed method

Most of my mosaics are made according to the reverse - or inverted method. I build them upside down, glue them on their support then flip them.

There are several reasons to do that :

When you work with materials of different thickness, and you want a flat , smooth result, this practically is the only solution.

It is also, in my opinion, results in a smoother  mosaic than the direct method.

The drawbacks are that you do not see exactly what you are doing, the colors of materials may be very different. Mirrors, for example, are usually grey or blue in the back. Stones are usually not polished on both sides, and the unpolished side is generally of a very different color ...

Here is an example of a piece right before and right after its flipping in August 2012. Remember than one is the mirror image of the other. You can see how the black granite looks very different in both pictures  Usually, non polished stones have much duller colors - but at times, the colors may be totally different from one side to the other... This is the case for some porcelains  and of most mirrors.

Eva's Eyes is mostly made of granite and ceramics. I will publish it in a few weeks when I have completed it. Once a piece is flipped, there are still quite a few hours to clean it up, grout it and frame it.

The Making of a Mosaic - Episode II

Once finished laying the stones upside down, I sprinkle them with a thin layer of grout and spray them with water. After a few hours I follow up with a coat of thinset. I like to mix the thinset with an acrylic additive, to improve its resilience and adhesive power.

This is a small windrose tabletop ready to be filled with thinset. You can see the difference in thickness of the different materials. the black granite is about 5/16" (8 mm) thick, while the red glass is about 1/8" (3 mm) thick. The direct method would not allow such disparity in thickness.

I finally cover the thinset with a structural material,  - I like commercial concrete backing boards used to cover bathroom walls to be laid with ceramic tiles.

I let it dry for at least 48 hours before flipping the piece. This is important. I have damaged some pieces for I was to eager to see them. The thinset needs time to solidify and release moisture. The does not really depends on temperature. It simply needs time.

I wrote somewhere else that the flipping of a mosaic is a very exciting thing, like a birth.  In a few seconds, you see what you created. It is very different from the  direct way, where you set the stones one by one and see your work appear little by little. Here, it is more like a birth; suddenly, the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.

Here is the Olive Mirror right after being flipped.

Now we are almost done; in "Making of a Mosaic - Episode III", we will complete our work.