Chapter I of VI · Stars set first, sky set round them
Il Cielo
look for the seams where two ripples meet
2,912 tesserae · The vault of stars
A star is set first.The sky is setaround it.
Ravenna knows this sky. In the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, built in the fifth century, the vault is a deep blue field of gold stars wheeling round a cross. We did not copy it; we borrowed its logic. A night sky in mosaic is almost all background, and the background is where the setter shows what they know.
Each star on our vault is a small gold figure with its own outline row. The blue is then laid in rows that follow the nearest edge — a star, a rosette, the frame — so every star sits at the centre of its own ripples, and where two ripples meet the rows close up in small cut pieces. No two meetings are the same.
- Tesserae in the rosette and its rings
- 2,912
- Gold stars on the vault
- 70
- Blue
- Six lapis tones and a night blue, mixed piece by piece
From cartone to tessera
The same figure, three times
