As an art form it’s also incredibly practical for interiors. It can be walked on, doused in water and easily cleaned.
Some take mosaic to extremes. The French artist Raymond Isidore covered every surface of each room in his house with mosaics of broken glass and crockery, including the furniture, the stove, the sewing machine and the coffee grinder. Although Isidore lived in the house with his long-suffering family while he completed the work, La Maison Picassiette in Chartes is now open to the public and attracts more than 30,000 visitors each year.
But there are more moderate ways to use mosaic, the simplest of which is to buy tiles mounted on mesh. The individual tiles are very small — 2½cm is standard — and you buy them in a 30cm sheet, making them easy to apply. Basic plain ceramic tiles (€40 per square metre from TileStyle) have little of the joie de vivre of real mosaics, but if you can afford to spend more, mosaic tiles become increasingly interesting.
Iridescent Glass Mosaic tiles (€478-€606 per sq m) from Fired Earth have a shimmering depth and come in unusual colours such as Incense, a deep reddish purple, and the rich metallic Copper Mountain.
“They’re not flat colours,” says Rob Tate of Fired Earth. “There’s a lot going on. The tiles are handmade in America, using recycled glass and a sort of mysterious alchemy. They are very popular for bathrooms, but most people can’t afford to do the whole room.”
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Isabelle Moore, of Regan Tile Design, says: “Mosaics are usually part of a scheme rather than the whole thing. They combine well with tiles of different sizes, often in the same colour.
“One of the advantages of using mosaics is that the wall doesn’t have to be straight. They can be used to cover pillars and really come into their own on the floor of a wet room, which has to slope towards the drain.”
Since the most beautiful glass and stone mosaic tiles can cost up to €900 per sq m, Moore suggests using them creatively. “We take measurements and draw out the area to show the client how to use the mosaics,” she says. “You can use mosaic tiles on a floor or wall — as a rule of thumb a floor tile can be used on the wall, but a wall tile can’t be used on the floor.
“You can also buy a mesh of river pebbles for €210 per sq m. The pieces are cut like a jigsaw, rather than square, so the area is not divided into geometrical shapes.”
The Roman Mosaic range from Fired Earth takes a step further towards dusty antiquity, with pictorial mosaics of dolphins, fish and fleur de lis borders, put on a mesh backing. The basic tiles cost €206-€280 per sq m, and the decorated tiles €15-€52 for a 20x20cm section.
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The cost of a unique mosaic by a contemporary artist is not much more than the best off-the-peg tiles. The Irish artist Laura O’Hagan specialises in ceramics, creating huge and vibrant mosaics out of fragments of tiles. A detailed mosaic will cost from €1,000- €1,500 per sq m.
One of O’Hagan’s recent projects was a series of giant-sized moveable walls for use indoors or out. The walls are on coasters, irregularly shaped and covered in a vibrant mosaic inspired by landscape, but abstract.
“It’s like having a wallthat’s also a painting: classical in one way, but with some of the effortless cool of street graffiti,” says O’Hagan.
She has also created a pair of curved screens (6ft x 6ft) decorated with mosaic. “I based the design on the Glen of the Downs, but I played with the images. One minute it looks like the Sugarloaf mountain, the next it’s an eagle. It means you don’t get bored.”
O’Hagan also works to commission on walls or floors. “The space behind the cooker is a popular one, but you can also have a section of mosaic in the dining room as a mural.”
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Eleanor Flegg is the editor of Room magazine