Traditional artistic mosaic tiles - smalti, marble, gold, millefiori and more   Browse our traditional mosaic tile products: Smalti | 24k Gold | Murano Millefiori | Marble tiles 1x1cm | Marble tiles 1.5x1.5cm | Marble rods | Marble chunks | Mother of Pearl | Semi Precious Stones By 'traditional mosaic tiles', we mean the materials that have been used through the ages, from ancient times to now, to create artistic and decorative mosaic. Traditional tiles are always hand worked, the glass is handcut and fused in traditional venetian furnaces. The gold is made from handlaid 24k gold foil fused under a micro thin layer of handblown glass. The marble is all handcut, for rougher chopped edges on all sides rather than the machine-cut sawn finish on the sides. Italian smalti mosaic Italian Smalti is a glass mosaic produced in Venice. It is amongst the first types of glass used for mosaic, and the introduction of this material expanded the mosaicist's pallet of colours enormously. There are literally thousands and thousands of colours available, and this explosion of colour availability is a major factor in the renaissance of mosaic in the Byzantine era. Our smalti, made by the Orsoni factory in venice, uses the same colour recipes today as were used hundreds of years ago. Italian smalti mosaic is characterised by the huge pallet of colours, the hand cutting for irregular and highly reflective surfaces, and high lead content for easier cutting). 24k Gold Mosaic 24k Gold mosaic tiles are made by sandwiching real 24k gold foil between layers of highest quality lead crystal. The bottom layer of crystal is often coloured a deep tourquoise (a lovely colour in itself, and many modern mosaicists will even use these tiles upside down to get that colour!). The colouring of the underglass is to achieve a greater depth of colour and light with the gold, and in fact tiles with transparent crystal underneath have a different tone to the gold. Gold tiles with the thicker layer of crystal transparent are generally used for pavement adn floor installations, with the gold layer closest to the floor, and the thicker crystal above it giving it more protection from the elements. Gold mosaic tiles have been used all over the world for hundreds of years, wherever the effect of gold and the durability of mosaic are needed. Marble and Stone Mosaic Marble and stone mosaic is the very first of the materials used for mosaics. The colour pallet is far more limited than glass, as of course we can only take what the earth gives us. But even so, there are still a huge number of marbles, granites, and natural stones to choose from. The ancients were limited to stones they could find relatively nearby, so often you find ancient mosaics that have created the most complex and wonderful designs using a pallet of only 3 or 4 colours. In fact, the Romans created a fashion for simply black and white mosaic that was perhaps the first explosion of mosaic for 'domestic' use -- with the romans, marble mosaic became architectural -- it began to be used to decorate the homes of regular (though wealthy!) folks. From the ancients to the romans to today, marble tiles create warm and textured mosaic that can be used equally well for modern abstract applications as for traditional reproductions. Our marble tiles and rods are all cut by hand, for a perfect handmade finish on all sides of the tiles. Millefiori and Semi-Precious Mosaic Semi Precious Stones and Mother of Pearl have also been used since the Babylonians to bring depth and preciousness to mosaic decorations, whereas Murano Millefiori are a much more recent addition to the mosaicist's pallet of material choices. A traditional material in and of itself, Millefiori have always been used in glass blowing and glass fusion techniques, and in modern times have been adopted also by mosaicists.