Our family friend lived in Spilimbergo and when we went to visit when i was 15, we looked round the mosaic school. I had made some mosaics by this age but seeing them large scale and integrated challenged me.
One of the few schools with training for mosaic artists in 'Scuola Mosaico del Friuli' in Spilimbergo, north Italy. The training takes three years. In the first year the students get to work with the Roman mosaics and the indirect method where the stones are glued to a specially designed paper. Later the mosaics is cemented and the picture is mirrored. The advantage is that the mosaic could be done completely in the studio then taken to site. But much of the vividness of the mosaic is lost as the stones are placed very close together. In the second year the students work with portraits of animals and humans. In the third year they make contemporary mosaics.
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