My dearest readers, I have to disappoint you:

there is nothing spectacular to show about the Ayvalik Mosaic yet. This week I tried installation techniques. Its all very technical in the following post.

But first the achievements:

All background stones are cut and tumbled. The two areas that still had to be filled with background  and all the conture lines around the figures were completed.

The kurna is made and ready to be tiled with mosaic.

The last 3 days past with measuring the wall parts.  From the part with the dolphins head and the long fish I had to cut off 1cm in order to have the tesserae not go over the top edge of the wall.

Unfortunately the parts of the other bench are still to short and I have to add another 10 cm background left and right. Grrr!

The tesserae are glued in reverse onto craft paper and the craft paper is glued to 3mm Mdf board all with water soluble glue. This made the transport and now the handling in the trials very easy. Of course the one or the other tesserae comes loose and falls off but its easy to glue them back.

in this pic the wall parts are lying on the benches. I will install them on the front of the benches.

Finding the right tile cement  here in Ayvalik was easy. Our builders use BASF Master Tile 15 fine grain. I made the first sample with this but it is too dark. I decided to make the tile cement and the grout the same color just to be sure that if the cement comes up to the surface of the tesserae it will not be visible because it has the same color then the grout. Making  small trial samples in a hidden corner was a bit painful for my legs but in the end the samples are protected as there is still building work going on in the rest of the room.

The two little wall samples that I prepared just in reverse method on paper were easily installed with a mix of thin set cement and latex diluted in water 1:1. The Working with the same cement (which had the consistency of a paste)  on the floor and trying to put stone by stone was a catastrophe. All the stones sank in because the mortar was far to soft.

Then I made the good old roman cement again just to get the feel of  its consistency once more. After that I was able to produce the same in thin set mortar. It has to have a consistency  like  soft play dough.

The second trial with this cement went well I could just loosely stick the tesserae onto the surface and then pound them to the right level using a board and a hammer.

So I am confident about handling the cement now. Just did not get to the grout yet.

On Friday the Getty Institute left an invitation in my inbox about an upcoming exhibition of mosaics from different areas of the Roman empire. The article behind the link gives a nice and short overview of some of the mosaics and their origins that will be displayed in the exhibition in Los Angeles.

Yesterday morning I was greeted by our neighbors  goats with a fresh jump into spring. Sooo sweet.