Mosaic

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Mosaic, in art, decoration of a surface with designs made up of closely set, usually variously coloured, small pieces of material such as stone, mineral, glass, tile, or shell. Unlike inlay, in which the pieces to be applied are set into a surface that has been hollowed out to receive the design, mosaic pieces are applied onto a surface that has been prepared with an adhesive. Mosaic also differs from inlay in the size of its components. Mosaic pieces are anonymous fractions of the design and rarely have the dimensions of pieces for intarsia work (fitted inlay usually of wood), whose function is often the rendering of a whole portion of a figure or pattern. Once disassembled, a mosaic cannot be reassembled on the basis of the form of its individual pieces.

bird mosaicMosaic floor fragment from a synagogue or church, cut stone with mortar from Israel, late 5th–6th century ce; in the Jewish Museum, New York City.Photograph by Katie Chao. The Jewish Museum, New York City, gift of Erwin Harvith, U 7529

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