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We hope you enjoy the site, and do get in touch. We are looking for anything mosaic related, your travel photos and stories, current artwork or any other mosaic news items.

Please send pictures (no larger than 600x800 at 72 res, and send no more than three at a time) or stories to: mosaic.workshop@virgin.net or maybe come and see us.

Saint Anthony

WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

Tessa Hunkin has just started to make a mosaic of Saint Anthony for Westminster Cathedral. The design is by the artist Leonard McComb RA and it will be the companion piece to Saint Francis which was installed last year. While Saint Francis was surrounded by birds in the traditional way, Saint Anthony is surrounded by fish, apparently commemorating an occasion in Rimini when the citizens ignored the Saint’s preaching but the fish in the sea came towards the shore to listen.

Together the two mosaics are a memorial to Francis and Anthony Bartlett donated by their family and friends.

All the preparatory work of adapting the design to fit the curved surface of the half-dome and drawing up the appropriately shaped sections has now been completed. Work has started on the central figure and over the next few months a small team will carry on until completion which is aimed for early 2010. They will be making the mosaic in  the back of the Princeton Street shop and customers will be able to see their progress.

NEW MOSAICS FOR DEVONSHIRE GREEN, SHEFFIELD

In 2006 Emma Biggs made a mosaic rill for Howard Street in Sheffield. It was part of the scheme for the improvements to area around the station. The scheme won a number of awards, and has proved to be very popular with the public.

She was recently invited to make mosaics for another environmental scheme in Sheffield – Devonshire Green -- a new city park. A series of large flowerbeds were created, planted for year-round interest in colour and texture. The beds are surrounded by Gaudi-like undulating walls, which also work as benches, so the public can sit and enjoy the sights.

Channels to hold mosaic were created in the walls, to give colour and interest to the muted colour of the sand and cement from which they were made. Here is an image of the walls before the mosaic was laid:

Bands of mosaic were laid in the ‘Opus Palladianum’ style (sometimes known as ‘crazy paving’). There were a total of eight beds and benches, and as they descended the hill, the colour of the mosaic gradually changed, from hot reds at the top of the hill, through the whole of the colour palette, until it attained the darkest of blues at the bottom of the hill.

These changes in colour and tone are a theme that runs throughout all the public projects in the city, and are picked up in the way the park is lit at night.

The colours of the mosaic were planned to complement the planting in the beds, as shown in the image below.

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