Architectural Ceramics: Tile+Mosaic

The Spirit Of Gaudi Lives On: Contemporary Broken Tile Mosaics

2012-02-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

A recent post, which covered the work of Antoni Gaudi and his contemporaries in Barcelona Spain in the turn of the last century, struck a chord with many readers of this blog. Architectural ceramics, primarily mosaics was turned on its head thanks to this new and vibrant technique of surface decoration. The revolutionary art and architecture of that time and place, particularly the broken tile style of mosaics resonates today.

I had long been a tile designer and maker when I visited New York City and happened on Grant's Tomb in Riverside Park in Manhattan one morning. I was looking for a place to do my T'ai Chi and was stunned to see that the memorial was surrounded on three sides by an undulating poured concrete bench covered with dozens of scenes in broken tile mosaic. I was familiar with the technique but had never seen such a large installation. The installation seemed to depict the history of New York City in a somewhat zany fashion. It totaled at least several hundred yards. Years later I found this article about the restoration of the project in the New York Times. This major work of public art was largely the creation of Chilean artist Pedro Silva and was assembled in 1972 by a team of hundreds of volunteers. In 2008 it was restored by the artist, his son and others.

Grant's Tomb, New York City


Riverside Drive and Sakura Park in the Background

Intrigued by the Gaudi inspired installation around Grant's Tomb in Riverside Park in New York City I began experimenting with the broken tile mosaic technique. Shorty after that, I started receiving commissions for outdoor projects that were perfect for broken tile mosaics. The first, titled "The Five Chinese Elements", was installed in the garden in front of an elementary school. Each of five benches represented one of the the five traditional elements: Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire.

Earth

Metal

Water

Wood

Fire

Completed Benches in Use

The next post of Architectural Ceramics: Tile+Mosaic will look at more contemporary broken tile mosaics installations. To receive notification of new posts to this blog click here and type subscribe in the subject line. All email addresses remain confidential and are not shared with any person or site.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. View his work at artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. See his recent projects on the Behance Network. Call George at 216 225 0368. Email him at gwoideck@tileandclayart.com.

Pattern and Design in Islamic Art and Architecture

2012-01-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I had a query recently about the source of an image of a tessellated mosaic panel from the Alhambra that appeared in a recent post of this blog. (Mosaics: The Beginning of Architectural Ceramics, Part Three). The query came from an architect and teacher from Buenos Aires and I had to pause to think where this image originally came from.


Tessellated Mosaic Panel in Moroccan Style

I pasted the URL of the photo into Google Image Search and while checking the results I discovered an extraordinary web resource of images of patterns in Islamic Art. The website is aptly titled Pattern in Islamic Art. It contains over four thousand images and includes many of the tessellated mosaic panels that are so dear to artists, architects and art teaches. Looking at these images I recalled a recent visit to the the Metropolitan Museum of Art's New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia. A long title for some very beautiful galleries that opened, after extensive renovation, on November 1, 2011. The renovations included work by Moroccan Craftsmen. I had an opportunity to visit these galleries shortly after they opened and here is a small sample of photos that I took of the gorgeous art on
display there.

In the Moroccan Tessellated Mosaic Style

Earthenware Plate Influenced by Chinese Porcelain

Patterns R Us, so to speak. The tessellated mosaic patterns come from North Africa. The beautiful ceramic tiles and pottery were often made in the Turkish city of Iznik (the Byzantine city of Nicea, of the Nicene Creed fame).

I hope you take the time to explore the images on Pattern in Islamic Art and if the opportunity presents itself, visit the new Islamic Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. View his tile and mosaic installations at Artisan Architectural Ceramics. See his recent projects on the Behance Network. Call George at 216 225 0368. Email him at gwoideck@tileandclayart.com.

Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona and the Modern Mosaic

2011-11-15T06:54:00.000-08:00

Gaudi shakes up the world of architecture and mosaic

Spain not only brought us the mosaics of the Alhambra in the South of the country; it also gave us the the modern mosaics of Barcelona in the North. They were created for buildings and parks by Catalan architects Lluis Domenech I Montaner, Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. The most famous of these three is certainly Gaudi whose magnum opus, the church of La Sagrada Família is yet to be completed after more than one hundred years of construction. The most significant quality of these architects' work is the seamless integration of architecture, sculpture, stained glass, ironwork and of course mosaics. This created a joyous artistic style known in Catalan as Modernisme. Their radical approach to mosaics was to mix traditional, square cut tesserae with irregularly shaped pieces selected from broken ceramic tile--a technique appropriately called broken tile mosaics. These mosaics have a great deal more surface interest than traditional mosaics do.

Let's take a look at one of the early examples of this this style of architecture and mosaic creation, the Palau de la Musica Catalana by Montaner. It's a concert hall designed for the Catalan Choral Society and it certainly would be a visual as well as an aural treat to attend a concert there.

Interior of the Palau with muses behind stage

Mosaic on the exterior facade-left side

Mosaic on the exterior facade-right side

Vent surround

Columns

The muses-upper sections

The muses-lower sections

The epitome of the Modernisme style in architecture is Gaudi's basilica La Sagrada Familia (Holy Family). It has a surreal quality that is best described in photos rather than words.

It's been in construction for a century now and on first viewing seems to be more of a fanciful sculpture that a house of worship. The mosaic detail on the spires define the power as well as whimsy that broken tile mosaics can impart to architecture.

Another of Gaudi's great works is the Park Guell, a horizontal creation as opposed to the verticality of the the cathedral.

The Park Guell's famous lizard

Benches in the Park Guell

The Barcelona style of broken tile mosaic, usually identified with Antoni Gaudi remains popular to this day. In our next post we'll profile some contemporary examples of this popular technique.
Receive email updates to his blog by clicking updates and typing subscribe in the message line. All email addresses remain confidential and are not shared with any person or site.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. View his work at artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. See his recent projects on the Behance Network. Call George at 216 225 0368. Email him at gwoideck@tileandclayart.com.

Mosaics: The Alhambra, Geometry and M.C. Escher

2011-03-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

It sounds a bit like a joke at an art convention: What do the Alhambra, Geometry and M.C. Escher have in common? Plenty it turns out. There's a direct line between the three beginning with the fact that Islamic mosaic makers, in the Middle Ages were using a complex form of Geometry in their installations. And it was a form of Geometry that Western Mathematics didn't understand until centuries later. This is all documented in the article "Tiles of Infinity" by Sebastian J. Prange in the September/October issue of Saudi Aramco World.

The mathematics of the tessellations used in these mosaics is clearly described in the article but the photos make the point just as clearly for visually oriented folks. (Saudi Aramco World is a beautiful and informative magazine about Islamic history, art and culture that is published six times a year. You can read it on the web or subscribe by mail for free: A real bargain).

The Mosaics described in Pranges's article are from central Asia but the Alhambra Palace in Andalusian Spain contains many similar mosaics.

Southern Spain is rich in this type of mosaic as well as Moorish influenced architecture. That region of Spain during the middle ages, with its culture of tolerance between Chrsitians, Jews and Muslims, is documented in the fascinating book "The Ornament of the World" by Maria Rosa Menocal. Thanks to Pieter Schaafsma from the American Society of Landscape Architects group on Linkedin for bringing this book to our attention.

So we've touched on the Alhambra and Geometry, but where does M.C. Escher come in? Of course he's famous for several kinds of graphic art. The first is his fanciful, architectural influenced prints that create a surreal world of arches, columns, staircases and towers that trick the visual senses.

The second type of work focuses on tessellations. And this is the work that was influenced by a visit that Escher and his wife made to the Alhambra in October 1922. But instead of the geometric shapes he found there, his revolutionary contribution to art was to use recognizable, often humorous shapes in his tessellations.

This style was parodied in a cover commentary in the New Yorker Magazine on the recent, tragic Gulf oil spill.

In some of his most wonderful later work, Escher combined the surreal with tessellations.

There's an excellent opportunity is see more of this work in a current exhibition at the Akron Art Museum titled "M.C. Escher: Impossible Realities". It runs through May 29, 2011 and contains the complete range Escher's graphic work. Looking at the prints in the exhibit, one is struck by his use of contrast and the depth of black that he attains. It's really quite thrilling see the real work instead of reproductions, web images and posters. The exhibit also contains several of the woodblocks that the prints were pulled from. And for more on the pivotal part Geometry plays in his work, look closely at the tessellations contained in his sketchbooks: Under the pen and ink and watercolor you can see the lightly penciled grids of hexagons, diamonds or triangles that underlie each design.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. View his work at artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. Call George at 216 225 0368. Email him at gwoideck@tileandclayart.com.

Mosaics: The Beginning of Architectural Ceramics, Part Three

2011-01-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

An Introduction to Architectural Ceramics: Mosaics in the Islamic World

The Islamic world, primarily of Asia and North Africa, took a radically different approach to mosaics than Europe did. Instead of using tesserae (the small, usually square tiles made from clay, stone of glass) to create a larger recognizable picture, Islamic artists used them to create complex patterns instead. Usually these mosaics formed tessellations, repeating geometric designs of polygons that have no overlaps of gaps. Contemporary mathematicians have marveled at the complex geometric patterns used in these mosaics. Usually, but not always, images of living creatures were not used for religious reasons. In Europe the place to see this type of tessellated mosaic is the Alhambra in the city of Granada in Andalusia in Southern Spain. During the middle ages Andalusia was ruled by Moorish Emirs. The mosaics in the Alhambra were heavily influenced by works being produced just across the Straits of Gibraltar in Morocco. Similar work was produced in the rest of North Africa and throughout Turkey and the Middle East.

Detail

If we travel across the Islamic world from West to East we arrive in the City of Samarkand in the Bukharan region of Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Although this area is thousands of miles from Morocco and the Andalusian region of Spain a similar geometric approach is often used.

Many of the patterns and designs used in these mosaics remind us of the Oriental rugs and the felted wall hangings produced in the the same region.

In the next post of Architectural Ceramics: Tile+Mosaic we travel to Barcelona Spain and the broken tile mosaics of architects Josep Maria Jujol and Antoni Gaudi.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. To view his work visit artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. Contact George at 216 225 0368.

Mosaics: The Beginning of Architectural Ceramics, Part Two

2011-01-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

Rome and Byzantium: The Christian Era in Mosaics

Big changes occurred in the Roman Empire when Christianity was declared the official religion of the empire during the fourth century reign of Constantine and Helen. With mosaics, however, the subject matter changed but the techniques remained the same. At about this time the empire was divided with Rome being capital of the western part and Constantinople (named after you-know-who) the capital of the east. The Eastern (Byzantine) empire continued to thrive while the West declined because of invasions of barbarians and other factors.
The greatest of the Byzantine mosaics were created in the Italian city of Ravenna which was part of the eastern empire during the reign of Emperor Justinian and his wife, the notorious Empress Theodora. Many of these mosaics depict the court of Justinian and Theodora.

Justinian

Theodora

The Royal Court

The prominent use of gold is similar to icons produced in Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Unfortunately with the encroaching dark ages. mosaics began a long decline along with society in general. Attila the Hun and other invaders had a pronounced negative effect on art, crafts, and architecture as well as science and math. When the Renaissance finally arrived mosaics took a back seat to oil painting and frescoes. It wasn't until the the Art Nouveau period in the early 20th Century do we see a resurgence of mosaics as a vital form of architectural decoration in the west. Our next post will cover mosaics in the Islamic world.

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist specializing in tile and mosaic. See his work at artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. Contact him at 216 225 0368.

Mosaics: The Beginning of Architectural Ceramics, Part One

2010-12-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

An Introduction to Architectural Ceramics: Ancient Mosaics

Dolphins from Greece

The field of Architectural Ceramics has played a dynamic role in the decoration of architecture from ancient civilizations to modern times. This field includes tile, mosaic and sculpture that is made from clay or glass. The history of Architectural Ceramics is fascinating, beginning in ancient Greece during pre-classical times (c. 800bce). Although ancient mosaics are often associated with the Roman Empire, the Greeks created the art form. Interestingly, the earliest Greek mosaics were not ceramic at all but were constructed from small square chips of stone. The Romans later called these chips “tesserae” which is the origin of our word tessellation.

Detail showing tesserae

The early mosaic artists must have felt the restrictions of the limited color palette offered by stone because they soon began using ceramic materials and glass in addition. The Romans loved all things Greek and created mosaics throughout their empire, from England in the West to North Africa in the South and to Turkey and Israel in the East. It's a thrill to view many of these mosaics still in place in their original locations. Others can be viewed in museum collections.


The Tree of Life	from the floor of a synagogue in Hamam Lif in Tunisia

Ancient mosaics have survived because the materials they're created from are so durable. In every case ancient mosaics were for floor decoration only--apparently it didn't occur to the Greeks and Romans that mosaics could be mounted on walls. For walls they used the fresco technique which involves painting on still moist plaster. Many frescoes from those times have also survived to this day including some from the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete dating from as early as1500bce.

Frescoes from Minoan Crete

The themes of ancient mosaics include gods and heroes doing what gods and heroes did, food, blood sports, animals, floral motifs and daily life including conjugal relations. One of my favorite mosaics is from the ancient city of Pompeii that shows a Roman soothsayer telling the fortune of two surprised, somewhat overstuffed and richly dressed women. One doubts that the fortune teller is predicting the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed the city in 79ce, but maybe she did. This mosaic and many others like it from Pompeii were buried for centuries in volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius, which although it killed tens of thousand of people, preserved the art for us to appreciate and learn from today.

Fortune teller from Pompeii

Medusa from Pompeii

Alexander the Great

Next post: Mosaics in the Christian Era

George Woideck

George Woideck is a ceramic artist who specializes in tile and mosaic. View his architectural ceramic work at artisanarchitecturalceramics.com. View his work as an artist-in-residence at tileandclayart.com. Contact him 216 225 0368.