03-29-2010, 08:25 PM
Uwe,
I won't list all of them, a proper explanation would take too much space (plus I've got a really slow connection ) but here is a really short and rough explanation.
A Roman mosaic floor is made to be seen as a whole, every part must flow. What you don't want is any 'point of focus', ie some part which draws the eye. Roman mosaicists worked to a set of rules to avoid this and these rules can be seen in every mosaic right across the Empire
The main one is Borderline. There is a line of the white background tesserae (tiles) around figures, animal or human. The reason for this is, the lines of the background tesserae being horizontal, where they meet diagonal lines of the figure you have to cut triangles to fill the gaps. Triangles create a sharp line by putting in the borderline you pull the triangles back away from the figure. This rule is also used in geometric mosaics. The best way to explain it is, if you had a pure white floor with a black triangle in the middle the application of this rules means you will get a line of white tesserae all the way around the outside of the triangle thne the rest of the background would be horizontal lines. The black triangle would have a line of black tesserae all the way around the inside then the rest of the inside would be horizontal lines of black tesserae.
Keystone, imagine a straight line of 10mm cubes, about 1 - 2mm between each one. Now put that line on a curve and you will get triangular gaps appearing. It would be easy to just come some more cubes in half to fill these gaps but the triangles would disrupt the flow so they just moved some of the tesserae further apart and cut keystone shapes to allow the line to flow, (you don't see many of these as the tesserae are all slightly irregular so you can match them to fill the gaps, but you don't see triangles used, there are a few exceptions to this rule, ie when the angle of the curve is too sharp).
Apologies for this being such a rough explanation. These are just 2 of the rules, don't take my word for it look at the original mosaics and you will see them in place.
See if you can see any information about these rules in a museum, I've yet to see any. They may be aware of the Borderline rule but I keep hearing 'it's so the figure will stand out'. It's the opposite, it's so all the lines of the figure blend in.
I won't list all of them, a proper explanation would take too much space (plus I've got a really slow connection ) but here is a really short and rough explanation.
A Roman mosaic floor is made to be seen as a whole, every part must flow. What you don't want is any 'point of focus', ie some part which draws the eye. Roman mosaicists worked to a set of rules to avoid this and these rules can be seen in every mosaic right across the Empire
The main one is Borderline. There is a line of the white background tesserae (tiles) around figures, animal or human. The reason for this is, the lines of the background tesserae being horizontal, where they meet diagonal lines of the figure you have to cut triangles to fill the gaps. Triangles create a sharp line by putting in the borderline you pull the triangles back away from the figure. This rule is also used in geometric mosaics. The best way to explain it is, if you had a pure white floor with a black triangle in the middle the application of this rules means you will get a line of white tesserae all the way around the outside of the triangle thne the rest of the background would be horizontal lines. The black triangle would have a line of black tesserae all the way around the inside then the rest of the inside would be horizontal lines of black tesserae.
Keystone, imagine a straight line of 10mm cubes, about 1 - 2mm between each one. Now put that line on a curve and you will get triangular gaps appearing. It would be easy to just come some more cubes in half to fill these gaps but the triangles would disrupt the flow so they just moved some of the tesserae further apart and cut keystone shapes to allow the line to flow, (you don't see many of these as the tesserae are all slightly irregular so you can match them to fill the gaps, but you don't see triangles used, there are a few exceptions to this rule, ie when the angle of the curve is too sharp).
Apologies for this being such a rough explanation. These are just 2 of the rules, don't take my word for it look at the original mosaics and you will see them in place.
See if you can see any information about these rules in a museum, I've yet to see any. They may be aware of the Borderline rule but I keep hearing 'it's so the figure will stand out'. It's the opposite, it's so all the lines of the figure blend in.
Lawrence Payne
Asking me to tile your bathroom is like asking Vermeer to creosote your shed ;-)
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www.romanmosaicworkshops.co.uk
www.romanmosaicpatterns.com
Asking me to tile your bathroom is like asking Vermeer to creosote your shed ;-)
[url:2kdj7ztq]http://www.romanmosaicworkshops.co.uk[/url]
www.romanmosaicworkshops.co.uk
www.romanmosaicpatterns.com
