Florentine mosaic: making

A striking decorative technique that can bring a unique chic to the interior or exterior is the use of mosaics. This complex, laborious art, which originated in the Ancient East, experienced periods of prosperity and oblivion, and today it occupies a worthy place among the methods of decorating rooms and furnishings. Mosaic is a typesetting image of pieces of stone, ceramics, smalt, colored glass. One of the many techniques for making mosaics is called Florentine.

It originated in Italy in the 16th century and owes its development to the famous Medici family, whose representatives have always patronized artists and masters of applied arts. Duke Ferdinand I of Medici founded the first professional workshop, inviting the best stone cutters from all over Italy and other countries. The extraction of raw materials was not limited only to local resources, because purchases were made in Spain, India, countries of Africa and the Middle East. A huge collection of semi-precious stones was collected for the workshop, the reserves of which are still used today.

The production of mosaics brought huge profits and was considered a strategically important production for Italy in those years. For three centuries, these mosaics were popular throughout Europe: the palaces of rulers and nobles certainly used luxurious Florentine "stone paintings" in their decoration. Only by the middle of the 19th century, this type of decorative decoration gradually went out of fashion.

The complexity of the technological process, the duration of production (the craftsmen worked on individual works for several years) and the use of semiprecious stones made this art an elite, courtly one. Not every royal court could afford the maintenance of such a workshop.

Russian craftsmen mastered and developed this technique during the reign of Queen Elizabeth Petrovna, and many of their works competed adequately with Italian designs. The development of this style in Russia is associated with the name of the master of the Peterhof Lapidary Factory Ivan Sokolov, who was trained in Florence. He skillfully used Siberian jasper, agate, quartz. Memories of his contemporaries have been preserved, where flowers laid out of stones seemed alive and fragrant.

The main centers for working with Florentine mosaics are the Peterhof and Yekaterinburg factories and the Kolyvan stone-cutting plant in Altai. Russian stone cutters begin to widely use the most beautiful Ural gem malachite, which has an expressive pattern, and highly hard Altai minerals, the processing of which is possible only with a diamond tool.

In the future, it was the artists of the Kolyvan plant for the station in Barnaul that created one of the largest panels (46 sq. M.), Made in this technique.

The Florentine method of mosaic laying is characterized by high-precision fitting of details, when no seams and joint lines are visible between stone elements of different shapes. Careful sanding creates a perfectly flat, uniform surface.

Crafted from natural stones, this mosaic is stunningly durable, bright colors do not fade over time and do not fade from sunlight.Smooth color transitions allow you to achieve similarities with the real painting, and not with inlay. Very often, Italian masters used black marble for the background, in contrast to which other stones lit up even brighter.

Natural rich color of the stone: the transitions of its tones, streaks, spots, strokes are the main pictorial means of this technique. The favorite materials for the production of Florentine mosaics were highly decorative stones: marble, jasper, amethyst, carnelian, chalcedony, lapis lazuli, onyx, quartz, turquoise. Italian craftsmen invented unique technologies for their processing, for example, the effect of temperature allowed the stone to acquire the desired color. The heated pieces of marble became a delicate pink hue, and the chalcedony enhanced the brilliance and brightness of the colors.

Each stone plate was selected by the master not only in color, but also in texture: for a mosaic with emerald foliage, it was necessary to find a stone with similar green veins, for the image of fur - a mineral with a pattern imitating its villi.

Florentine mosaics were actively used in church decoration for finishing floors, niches, portals, as well as decorating secular interior items: tabletops, furniture elements, various boxes, trinkets. Large panels, similar to paintings, adorned the walls of state halls, offices and living rooms.

The process of making a Florentine mosaic can be roughly divided into three stages:

• procurement operations - selection of high-quality raw materials, stone marking and cutting;
• a set of mosaic elements - there are two ways: forward and backward;
• finishing - finishing and polishing of the product.

When choosing a stone, it is very important to know and take into account its properties., since the direction of the cut depends on it. Each mineral has individual optical characteristics, shimmers in a special way in the light and has its own structure. The stone must be moistened with water, then it becomes bright, as after polishing, and you can understand how the finished product will look.

Selected stones are marked and cut on a special machine. During this process, cold water is poured abundantly to cool the saw and the safety precautions are carefully monitored. Elements are cut with a margin for processing seams.

Florentine craftsmen cut out the necessary fragments from thin, 2-3 mm thick plates using a special saw - a kind of bow from a bent elastic cherry branch with a stretched wire. Some craftsmen continue to use this authentic tool today.

Finishing of individual parts along the contour is carried out on a grinding machine using a carborundum wheel or a diamond faceplate, manually finalized with diamond files.

When assembling the elements into the overall picture in the reverse way, the mosaic fragments are laid face down along the stencils and fixed from the inside with an adhesive to a base (for example, from fiberglass or tracing paper). This technology is convenient for creating a large-scale project: large parts assembled in this way from small elements are then assembled on site. This method also allows the front surface of the mosaic to be sanded in a workshop environment.

The direct typesetting technique is the laying of the fragments of the drawing immediately on a permanent basis. The old masters laid out pieces of cut stone plates on the leveled reinforcing layer on site. Today, direct dialing, like reverse dialing, is most often done in workshops on a fiberglass base and then transferred to an object.

The assembled product is processed using finishing and polishing pastes. For different types of stone, different polishing compositions are used, depending on the physical and mechanical properties of the mineral.

The high decorativeness of the Florentine mosaics has long been appreciated by architects. During the Soviet period, the use of various types of mosaics for public spaces flourished. Most of the panels were made of smalt, but the Florentine method was also not forgotten and was actively used. And since this technique is the most durable, since years have no power over stone paintings, they still look like new.

In modern interiors, a properly selected Florentine mosaic will not look like an alien and outdated element. Magnificent patterned panels for walls and floors in the hall, bathroom, kitchen can be entered into both classical and modern style, they will revive a strict high-tech or loft. Mosaic canvases will also look great in the decoration of a pool or terrace in a country house.

Small forms of this mosaic also look interesting: decorating caskets, mirrors, gift writing sets for the study, and so on.

This technique is also widely used in jewelry: large brooches, earrings, rings, pendants with a type-setting stone pattern carry the special appeal of natural material.

Despite the technological progress, the Florentine mosaic method still remains laborious and man-made, so these works are quite expensive, and the price of the best samples is comparable to the cost of the masterpieces of classical painting.

The master tells even more about the art of "stone painting" in the next video.