I like to stay in Ravenna on holiday several months of the year to release some of the restless creative energies the goddess Vor has so charitably bestowed upon my person.

While many women from Germania are very talented in the art of textiles, I find that I am drawn toward the art of mosaic instead of the traditional textile arts. So then, it is here, I come to relax, and enjoy such interesting endeavor. I have decorated my studio depicting the historical evolution of the art of mosaic since its ancient roots to the more modern form.

Please, come on in, and we will share some of the fine Rhine wine I have brought from home, and chat about mosaics. As we move on into the first room take a look back at the path that brought you to me. It has a theme rooted in the ancient beginnings of mosaic art. In Neolithic times pebbles and small stones were used for interior and exterior paving and flooring to provide an even hardwearing surface for walking.

Practical but not decorative.

As you enter onto the terrace here you see that the choosing of the smaller pebbles to creat the illusion of reality within the mosaic led to a gradual transistion into using cut stone or marble. At first the pebbles were chipped and shaped for greater definition. Later on it became more economical to prepare rectangle rods of stone from which individual small cubes called tesserae could be cut and used as required. This gave the mosaicist greater control over his or her work. Examples of tesserae are found wherever Greek Culture spread for instance on the Greek islands of Delos, Sicily, Italy and Alexandria Egypt, and Pergamum, Turkey.

Down from the terrace to your left, is the heart of my studio and where here, in Ravenna, mosaic art is still making history. At this moment in time we make the central parts of mosaics away from the site where they are to be installed, the reason is that the tesserae are much small and the work more detailed. That is what this marble slab is for we now stand near. You see, I am halfway through my portable panel, called the emblema atop the slab. The emblemata are finely executed with some of the tesserae consisting of small contour lines called Opus Vermiculatum (little worms is vermin in Latin) which follow a curve or shading line. They are very detailed and the images are modulated in tone and direction to look like paintings in stone thus continuing the Hellenistic practice of imitating painting.

When I have completed this panel I will transport it to the job site and it will be installed in the space I've left for it in the center of the design. The surrounding borders are created directly on the site since they are made up of larger stone cubes and marble. I like to use a variety of traditional Grecian motifs and patterns. Imperial Roman citizens regarded mosaics as a luxury and so there are many fine examples from wealthy villas of the time. In Pompeii and Herculaneum are particularly rich in examples of fine mosaics that adorn their baths and halls. The refined emblemata found in Pompeii was the work of Greek Mosaicists. Their works embellished the villas of the wealthy patrician classes. The Romans adapted the imagery to their liking , with battles being the favored, whether between great leaders such as Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Issus , or between smaller beings , such as a cat and a quail or a lobster and an octopus.