Conflicted thoughts on manufacturing
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 least half of them call me Tessa. But if I seem like a vacant space on the outside, inside there is something going on.
I don’t know what impression I made on the workforce at Milano Mosaics. But they certainly made an impression on me. I remember almost everything they ever told me. I revered them. I lapped up the stories about working with Boris Anrep (Russian artist and mosaicist, and creator of the entrance floors to the National Gallery) and jigging up vitreous mixes for various hotels and subways across London. I was entertained by tales of going to Venice with artist Howard Hodgkin to specify tiles for his swimming pool mural at the Broadgate Leisure Club – and was delighted to buy the left-over supplies. I loved the pride both in high and commercial culture – thank god no one was working the marketing spin at Milano Mosaics. The showroom was hung with dog-eared and slightly out of focus photos of tile-clad walls adjacent to car parks and concrete fencing. What a relief it was to exit promo-land and enter the world of making and manufacturing.
‘Saivo mosaics – lovely colours – have you got any of these?’ I enquired.
‘Oh no, darlin’ – we ‘ad tons of it, but we used it as ballast under the car park.’ This was a typical exchange at Milano Mosaics.
In the old days mosaic was supplied loose in wooden barrels, and they still had those in the warehouse. Then there were sacks – plenty of them – and finally boxes. These days mosaic is supplied in health and safety sized two square metre cardboard cartons, but these boxes were at least twice the size – huge and heavy. Glass mosaic was thicker then, and came sheeted up with a tighter joint. Wider joints, thinner tiles – less material, more profit. When the manufacturers made the changes, I felt ripped off, but these days I suppose we would all be pleased we were using up less of the world’s resources.
Talking of the world’s resources, I heard an interesting fact yesterday. Ten years ago, they had no high-speed rail in China. This year they have more high-speed rail track than all of Europe, and next year they will have more high-speed rail than all of Europe and the rest of the world. Global growth — it’s alarming. It almost makes me glad the tiles are getting thinner.
Whizzy manufacturing.
This photograph has been released into the public domain by its author, Alex Needham at the wikipedia project.
As any blogger knows, each new entry generates a slew of spam. Ironically, the first spam comment on this blog was a Chinese manufacturer promoting their vitreous glass. More on this tomorrow….