Roman mosaic depicting feast found in Caesarea Germanicia in southeastern Turkey | Hacker News Reader

Roman mosaic depicting feast found in Caesarea Germanicia in southeastern Turkey

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87 pointsdiodorus31 comments

I wonder why people don't make copies of these for buildings and homes.

We have a good number of contemporary mosaics installed in subway stations in NYC. Here's a recent (2021) one by artist Nick Cave: https://new.mta.info/agency/arts-design/collection/each-one-...

Because we let the bean counters decide the beauty of our architecture.. Like an unused muscle, our capability for physical artisan works withers..

Err, no, it's because people don't like the aesthetics and/or don't want or can't pay for it. Have you ever considered having a mosaic installed in your house?

Bisazza exist and I have a bathroom with a (non-figurative) mosaic made with their tiles, but they're expensive and require specialists to install.

I have and my conclusion is that it's quite hard to make art out of shaped pieces of rock. It looks like a worse pixelated version of what otherwise could be decent art. At least, IMHO.

Surprisingly not that expensive or difficult to work with. They come on mesh backers and are relatively straight forward to install. Here's a random example:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1075823696/handmade-royal-peaco...

Pretty good work and not that pricey at $2,500 for a 3ft x 8ft piece.

I suspect it's been on the decline since canvas became cheap (through mechanized production) a few hundred years ago.

It’s been on the decline since islamic potters managed to reliably fire painted tiles.

Because the high quality mosaics are actually quite expensive and just making a photocopy maybe looks cheap and not very inspiring without the cultural context.

This does not stop people doing it with faux marble and cheap gold, though.

> Because the high quality mosaics are actually quite expensive

Really? How so? You just buy colored tiles, transfer the outline to the mortar, and put the tiles in like paint-by-number.

Actually a lot of roman mosaic were not uniform sized ceramic tiles they were quite often different colored stones/pebles/glass and they would be broken and chiseled away into custom shapes as they were 'drawing' the mosaic. It is a massively labour intensive endeavour to reproduce some of these mosaics.

Examples from Conimbriga in Portugal:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b6/02/e4/b602e479e1dd06431f56...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6e/25/e7/6e25e74191ff86eeacb8...

If I look closely at the Roman ones, the outlines are done with square tile following the lines. The infill also follows the lines, with partial ones to fill in places where the square is too big. The partial ones are simple straight cuts, today you can get a snipping tool to do that. Not necessary to chisel them. The joints are hardly precision cut, in fact, the unevenness is part of the charm.

Don't need to do the whole floor, just a section, like a "medallion" that is done in wood floors. Medallions in wood are a lot more skilled to make, because you can't fill the gaps with mortar like is done on the mosaics.

I can't see more than an afternoon for, say, a 3x3 one.

The hq mosaics are not painted and they are not ceramics that could be easily shaped. Each coloured segment is a separate piece of stone that must be curved in the correct shape. The stones must be put in place by hand and they must match perfectly. This is tedious and skilled artisan's work that was expensive before and is expensive today. That's why those mosaics are found only in the public visible parts of the homes of the very rich people.

Take a close look at the mosaic in the article. There's no precise fitwork going on there. All the fitted pieces are cut versions of the square tiles, which can be done today with a simple nipper, like using scissors to cut cardboard. The cuts are all straight, not curved.

As far as the design goes, just copy it from a Roman one.

Well, I'm blind and cannot confirm. Sorry.

Even if you are correct though and the mosaic is easy to reproduce, it will be out of context. It will be just a few people who can understand what is represented there and why, and if you are going to throw money and effort at it, you can as easily invest in something original and that might match better the rest of the design in your home/office.

There are many online pictures of various Roman mosaics. I'm sure one can find one that fits. It's just pretty pictures. Nobody needs to understand it or know why or know it's Roman. You don't have to have a Roman villa for a house. Sheesh.

Me, I have some cast cement copies of gargoyles guarding my driveway. People have always liked them and sparked some fun conversations. I noticed them while browsing a local artist's studio, they didn't cost much. I think he wanted to get rid of them :-)

I like having little details like that. I'm surprised at such a negative reaction people have to a copy of a Roman mosaic.

I don't think that it is negative. If you read the comments, the question is more about the supposed price.

How long does that take? Count that in hours, times a fair wage for an artisan (or multiple depending on size), plus material cost; do you want to / can you pay that? I mean an imprecise calculation puts it in an order of magnitude of thousands, not even counting whether you want an original design.

That said, there are methods of mass producing mosaics in factories for cheap. Then it becomes a matter of taste more so than money and artisanship.

Phooey, just copy the Roman ones. The copyright on them has expired long ago.

Many houses have a cut class stained window panel. They're a lot more work to make. Houses with custom tile and custom sinks aren't unusual, either, and they're not restricted to mansions. I know this because a friend of mine makes and installs them. He redid the bathroom counter, sink, and bath wall for me, tub to ceiling, and it wasn't that much. It was simply mahvelous.

I recently started seeing a new dentist, and recognized that he'd done all the sinks for him :-)

It’s a lot of labor compared to a coat of paint. That’s what makes it expensive. Also a mosaic like this probably does not use uniform tiles, so you’d have to have a massive set or you’d want to restrict yourself to patterns that can use uniform tiles. Still, it’s a lot of work. A robot could do it, but doing it by hand is expensive.

Right, for these mosaics the fragments that make up the mosaic are cut by hand, each one is different. What are now called mosaic tiles will give a very different result because they make a square grid, more like pixel art. Although there’s historical precedent here too, for instance in square kufic calligraphy!

It’s not uncommon though to see mosaic floors in pre-war European homes, especially in entrance halls, but they tend to be designs specific to the space. After all, copying an existing design requires the same floor dimensions.

In Sevilla, there’s actually a palace where the owner changed the dimensions of the rooms to fit the roman mosaics (originals) they had installed https://visitasevilla.es/en/museum-fine-arts-and-other-place...

New mosaics are rare because labour is more expensive, but for sure they still get made. EDT I’ve always figured that it’d be something fun to commission for new buildings because, old as the medium is, you still have the basic elements of colour and form that should allow contemporary artists to express themselves.

for example here’s a recent mosaic in England by Grayson Pery https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2015/05/A-House-for-Essex_... part of https://www.dezeen.com/2015/05/15/house-for-essex-fat-grayso...

or a Belgian atelier making traditional mosaic floors http://www.mosaicodidue.be/vloeren-nieuw/

> What are now called mosaic tiles will give a very different result because they make a square grid, more like pixel art.

Surely that’s why we call it “tile mosaics” rather than “mosaics”? Though some of the islamic tilework is really nice, it used “generically shaped” tiles but not square ones resulting in beautiful patterns (whose regularity could be broken up by playing with tile colors) e.g. zellij tilework.

For sure! It’s just that GP seemed to imply the kind of mosaic shown in he picture to be a tile mosaic, whereas it is not. I agree amazing things are possible in tile mosaics

Have you done it before ? Whenever someone explains something nontrivial as "you just" in my experience they are seriously underestimating the work required and never actually tried to do it.

I haven't done mosaic tiles, but I have done tiled walls. I've also made my own custom fired tiles.

There's some blundering about at first, but once you get the hang of it, it goes quickly.

I’m sure you can find similar items in the homes of the ultra wealthy and eccentric class. Things like this would be out of place in a small middle class home. Though, I do agree that they are incredible works of art and wish our society moved towards having murals of similar decadence within the ordinary home.

There is not much request.

I wish they had printable version...

@dang Caesarea Germanicia should be capitalized, since it's a city, not a plant or something.

Fixed. Thanks!

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