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Comerus alert - Reproduction of Alexandermosaic for sale
#1
Avete omnes,

I'm not sure, if this has been discussed here already, but I found this commercial site by coincident:

[url:1i8k89gm]http://en.mosaic.cc/[/url]

Scroll down to the bottom left side and You find 'Alexander Mosaic' with further going informations, containing nice painted reconstructions of the mosaic:

[url:1i8k89gm]http://alexandermosaik.de/en/[/url]

Scroll first site bottom to 'Mosaics on stock' and You find their offers:

[url:1i8k89gm]http://en.mosaic.cc/stock.html[/url]

Scroll to the middle and to the item 'FK081 420 to 180 cm Battle of Alexander at Issus':

[url:1i8k89gm]http://en.mosaic.cc/FK081.html[/url]

And if You have somewhat more than 7.500 € for such decoration, the mosaic can be Your's. Single parts of the reconstruction are at least debatable or not correct (the man behind Alexander wears a helmet instead of the red kausia), but I think the overall impression is more than good.

Greets - Uwe
Greets - Uwe
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#2
Nice mosaics..........(pause while I get on my high horse :wink: )

Look at any Roman mosaic of a figure and you'll see a line of the white background tesserae (tiles) bordering the figure. Somehow they managed to get every mosaicist throughout the Roman Empire working to this same rule which, to the best of my knowledge is unique in any form of art.

There are another 8 rules which you can see applied in every Roman mosaic, if you don't know them chances are you won't see them. If you do know them and any are missing then you'll spot it very quickly.

As I said they are really nice mosaics you can definately see the work that has gone into them and their other pieces are equally well made. But the 'Ancient' mosaics can't really be described Roman as they have not set the pieces according to the Rules.

OK lecture over Smile

PS FYI the Alexander mosaic had tesserae cut down to 1mm, ie 60 per 1 square centimetre.
Lawrence Payne

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
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#3
Salve Musivarius,

I agree to You absolutely. In details the reproduction maybe even incorrect (e. g. the man behind Alexander wearing a helmet instead of a Macedonian cap) but the overall view is quite good. One may not forget that it refers firstly to the painting that - according to producer's site - was made shortly after the discovery of the mosaic when it was possibly more complete than today.

What disturbs me more is the style of the painting. For me the moustaches of the Macedonians are somewhat suspicious and seem to display the local Italian fashion of the time when the mosaic was found (1831). And the (brass ?) shield under Alexanders horse out of which an exactly 1/4 section has been broken out, seems to be very unlikely for me - but perhaps was it originally a broken chariot's wheel that has been misinterpreted by the painter - who knows? :?

But You made me very curious about the 9 rules for a correct Roman mosaic - would You be so kind and tell them to us? :wink:

Yours sincerely - Uwe
Greets - Uwe
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#4
Hi Gioi,

Quote:I know about the sell for a quite time back ago!

I should have known it :wink:

Greets - Uwe
Greets - Uwe
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#5
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.
Lawrence Payne

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
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