From the studio
Recent handcut work
A handcut mosaic mural is built one tessera at a time — no printed film, no digital tile image, no shortcuts. Send us your artwork or photograph and we will cut, set and ship a mosaic that holds its detail for decades outdoors as well as indoors.
In a handcut mural, every single piece of glass or stone is scored and cut individually, then placed by hand into the design. A 3 m × 2.4 m mural typically needs 12,000–18,000 tesserae, and each one is positioned with the grain of the artwork in mind.
That is the difference that matters. Machine-cut mosaics use uniform squares in a fixed grid, so curves, eyelids, petals and lettering break apart into visible steps. Printed “mosaic effect” tiles are worse still: from three metres away they look convincing, but they have no surface relief, they fade, and they cannot be repaired. A handcut mural has real depth, real light play, and any damaged area can be re-cut and re-set.
The test that separates the two: run your eye along a diagonal in the design. In a handcut mural the tesserae follow the line and the angle changes gradually. In a machine-cut or printed version, the diagonal breaks into a staircase.
| Material | Where it is the right choice | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Vitreous glass (smalto) | Most indoor and outdoor murals, wet rooms, pools | Non-porous, frost-proof, UV-stable. The everyday workhorse. |
| Gold & silver leaf glass | Halos, jewellery, borders, feature highlights | Real leaf between glass layers — will not tarnish. Adds a genuine shimmer that photographs poorly but reads beautifully in a room. |
| Smalti | Fine painterly detail, landscape and portrait | Hand-poured Italian glass, irregular cut. Gives the richest colour range. |
| Marble & natural stone | Floors, medallions, exterior facades, high-traffic areas | Honest, heavy, timeless. Best for geometric and classical work. |
| Mother of pearl | Skies, water, feathers, soft highlights | Iridescent and directional — it shifts as you walk past. |
We work to your wall, not to a fixed product size. Murals are supplied in numbered sections that join invisibly, so a 6 m × 3 m hotel atrium wall arrives in manageable panels with a setting-out drawing.
For pool floors, wet zones and exterior facades, see the material notes above and our pool mosaic and installation guide pages.
Straight answers to the questions we are asked most often.
Yes, when it is built with vitreous glass and installed with the correct cementitious or epoxy adhesive plus grout. Glass tesserae are non-porous and frost-proof, which is why the same material is used in swimming pools. We supply pool-grade specification for wet areas and exterior use.
Typically four to seven weeks from approved proof to shipping, depending on size and detail. A small roundel can be faster; a multi-panel atrium mural with gold leaf runs longer. We give you a dated production schedule with the quotation.
In most cases yes. Send clear photographs of the damaged area with a ruler or coin in frame, and tell us the approximate age. We can match colour and tesserae size closely; exact matches on heavily weathered historic work are best discussed first.
Your artwork, a photograph, or simply a reference image plus the wall dimensions and the height it will be viewed from. A phone photograph of a painting is usually enough to quote. Higher resolution is only needed later for production.
Send us your artwork and wall size — get a free custom mosaic design plan and quotation within 24 hours.