Chapter VI of VI · Letters in tesserae
La Tabula
A tabula ansata — a tablet with dovetail handles —is how Roman craftsmen framed an inscription.Ours carries the workshop’s name,set in red and black on white marble.
Scroll to discover
look how the marble bends into the letters
4,347 tesserae · The workshop’s signature
Andamento:the way therows run.
Andamento is the setter’s word for the course the rows take: which way the pieces run, how they turn round a figure, where two currents meet. It is the first thing a mosaicist looks at on an old floor, and the first thing we teach.
Letters are hard to set: every stroke must be at least two pieces wide, and the marble around them must bend into the counters of the A and the R without breaking. The white field is set in rows that follow the letters, so the name sits in a faint halo of its own ripples.
- Tesserae in the tablet
- 4,347
- Letters
- 16
- Marble
- white, set in rows that echo the letters
From cartone to tessera
The same figure, three times
