Mosaicism: A Book Review

And a small gift to my readers at the end.

Helen Bodycomb made up her own rules when she wrote Mosaicism.

It’s certainly not a how-to-mosaic book. And it’s not a history of mosaic book. It’s more like if Andy Goldsworthy was a mosaicist kind of book. Poetry and prose, set to gorgeous images with careful curation. It’s a bit small for a coffee table book, but you will want it on your coffee table regardless.

The subtitle is Thinking in Mosaic and with each page turned, that’s exactly what Helen helps you to do; think… in mosaic. The beautiful translations from the English into Italian by Carolina Zanelli are a befitting nod to those Roman shoulders upon which we all, as modern mosaicists, stand.

Some of my favorite pages were the ones where the man whose name will not be remembered discovers the shape of tesserae-to-be while rolling dice in his pocket. She crafts the wisp of a story in the day of the life of an anonymous laborer, working on The Stag Hunt mosaic during the decades of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. I have rea…