The growing demand for small mosaics came about with the rise in tourism in Italy. The method was used on small and large objects, from jewellery and snuff boxes to pieces as large as table tops. The best workshops competed with one another to create ever more finely worked products. These mosaics differed from their forerunners in the first period because they were meticulously created with much smaller tesserae in a technique now known as ‘micro mosaic’. The second great period for mosaic art happened in Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They could be incredibly sumptuous and grand, especially with the abundant use of gold leaf. But the first heyday of mosaics came during the Byzantine Empire (330- 1453) when they were used to decorate the early Christian churches. They became incredibly popular in Ancient Rome where they were constructed from small pieces of marble, terracotta and glass and were often used to decorate the floors of villas and the basins of fountains. They were made from simple materials like pebbles and shells. The earliest examples were found in Macedonia and date from the third century BCE. Once the mastic has hardened, the gaps between the tesserae are filled with coloured wax and the whole picture is polished to give it a smooth and even surface. The metal support is filled with mastic in which the tesserae are painstakingly placed. The most common technique involves melting coloured glass, called smalto, pulling it into thin rods or threads and then, after it cools, cutting it into minute pieces which are then arranged on a copper or gold tray to create images, usually historical Roman scenes, or plants and animals. There are various methods of making micro mosaics. It is not hard to imagine that the process for making them demands immense precision and is extremely time-consuming. The most sophisticated micro mosaics may consist of 200 to as many as 850 tesserae per square centimetre. Tesserae measure no more than 1 mm, which is incredibly small. Micro mosaics are created from ‘tesserae’ minuscule fragments, usually of glass, that are arranged so as to form small designs. This dark accent is also used in the clasp, which is decorated with a multi-coloured, exotic bird on a flowering branch against a black background. Each drop has another small, round ornament with black micro mosaic-attached at the top or hanging below it. Between them are trefoil-shaped drops filled with grey-green tesserae. The heart-shaped drops with the blue background are decorated with flowers. In the heart-shaped drops with the red background we see glass micro mosaics with swans and doves, facing left and right alternately. This refined eighteen-carat gold necklace with micro mosaics in archaeological style is made up of heart- and trefoil-shaped drops on a gold cord, separated by ribbed gold tubular beads.
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