Lo-tech
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 an even, mathematically precise distance from one another. The width of the grout joints on the jigs is (or rather used to be) precisely that of the sheets of vitreous material, so a wall of random mix, for example, could run seamlessly in to a wall of single coloured material bought from the factory. The Italians were traditionally very protectionist about letting outsiders know about or buy the tools of the mosaic trade, so I felt rather proud to have been permitted, or even encouraged to buy them. I was being crowned an insider, I felt.
When a design is complete in the jig, you lay a glued sheet of paper on top of the tiles, place a board over it, and flip the tray and board upside-down, holding very tight. If you don’t hold tight enough, the tiles move around, and the mathematical precision is lost. The best boards to use are small sheets of hardboard, rough side up, fractionally bigger than the standard square foot of the setting tray. The rough side is less prone to problems created by any accidental spillage of glue than the shiny side. When I bought Milano’s jigs, the boards came too, as a free gift.
They were the cause of regular embarrassment. At some stage, a Milano employee had undergone a psychotic breakdown, and the boards were scrawled with obscene and insane graffiti of a type I cannot relate here. But if they were shocking, they were freighted with history. I could have bought or made new boards, but I treasured these objects. They were invaluable and put to multiple uses in the workshop. How helpful it was to find just the right sized board to shift a wet mosaic, made by a charming student from the Home Counties, on paper, according to the reverse method. How I perfected, like a magician, the act of laughingly spiriting away the board from a surprised individual, in a valiant effort to convince her she hadn’t just read what she thought she had.
The jigs themselves were stamped with the name of the company that sold them. UDNY, they said. What Milano was to North London, Edgar Udny was to South London. If you were determined enough you could find them under a railway arch in Vauxhall. In the entrance to the arch, squinting into the sun from the troglodytic gloom, sat one, or sometimes two of the employees, jigging up a random mix. Yes, those were the days of the old technology.
(For non-mosaicist readers, a ‘random mix’ is a selection of tiles, placed with a balanced rhythm of colours in a non repetitive way. Confusingly, given the name, they generally cannot be made according to pure chance.)
An antique Udny setting tray, with a off-set, rather than a gridded structure.
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