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 unfamiliar [...]
In London in the late eighties there was a fashion for the distressed and old. The city was gripped by a frenzy of house buying. Everyone — except me – was feeling rich. The Conservatives were greasing the palms of protest with oil wealth, and half the city seemed to be on the move, trading [...]
‘Do you have a sponsor in Oman?’ asked an exotic voice. ‘Not at the moment’ I said, attempting sang-froid. I gestured excitedly to Tessa, and covered the mouthpiece of the telephone, in the days when it was obvious which bit of the telephone was the mouthpiece. ‘He asked if we have a sponsor in Oman!’ [...]
I worked on my own for about a year. After a while I hired Tessa. I was happy to have her. She was a qualified architect, and understood technical issues. She was paid by the hour. Money was tight, and life became increasingly difficult. ‘Let’s just split the funds when we get them’ she suggested, [...]
In the eighties, the word ‘studio’ was everywhere. Its vaguely arty associations meant it was used to sell everything from real estate to packaging. I wanted a name for my new mosaic company.
Mosaic Studio?
Over my dead body!
It had to be a word that suggested creative endeavour could be rooted in earnest toil and cooperative values. [...]
After Mosaic Summer School this August, I am teaching a five-day course: ‘Marble and Smalti with the Hammer and Hardy.’ The course runs in March too, if anyone thinks they might be interested. Both are at West Dean College, an impressive flint-faced country house in the Sussex downs.
Twenty-three years ago I was one of perhaps [...]