‘Would you like a cup of tea Loric?’ ‘His name’s Goris’ said Toby. ‘Goric?’ ‘No. Goris.’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ I said. ‘Don’t worry’ said Goris ‘Ive been called all sorts of things – Lawrie, Boris ….’ Goris, like Boris, I thought, I’ll remember that. ‘Well Goris, would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘That’d [...]
We met outside the block of flats. ‘Hello’ I said. ‘Hello’ said Toby. ‘This is Tim. This is George, and this is Ilaria.’ ‘Hello’ I said. We worked all day making mosaics. George, a beautiful English girl, told us about her boyfriend. ‘We met on the plane to LA’ she said. ‘It was amazing. I [...]
When Milano Mosaics closed down, in the 90s, I bought their jigs. Jigs are setting trays, in which you lay out mosaic tile patterns face up. When you use one to design a tile pattern, you see it as it will be seen when fixed to the wall. Jigs ensure all the tiles are at [...]
I’m not really a moulder of men, I’m more of a fellow traveller. I think it comes from having brothers and sisters – you just have to share, or there’s big trouble from the siblings. I don’t make much of an impression on people either – they always forget they’ve ever met me, and at [...]
In the eighties, when I started working in mosaic, there were two suppliers of glass – Udny and Milano. Milano was somewhere in the outer reaches of North London. It might have been High Barnet — those depressing leafy conservative places all look the same to me. I did enjoy the occasional trip into this [...]