… and off went the marble from Ankara University to Gaziantep in the truck of the Zeugma Archeological Project. (click on the pic and they open in a new link) Here I would like to extend my special  thanks to Prof Dr Kutalmis Görkay from Ankara University Archeological Faculty and director of the Zeugma Excavation Project for being my sponsor in my mosaic endeavor in the past year. Sponsor not in a monetary way. But he was always there with his knowledge, advice and ideas how this project could be put into practice in the context of Turkey, which I as a foreigner often would have misjudged. He kept my idealism going and not let it drown in practical problems. Prof Görkay was the one who connected me with Nusret Özdemir, who comes from the village of Belkis, which was flooded due to building the Belkis dam on the Euphrates river. Up to the year  2000 together with many other villages the two archeological  sites of the ancient cities – Seleuceia (today Zeugma) and Apamea …

…. it is overwhelming what support and interest I find in my quest to get THE MATERIAL.. First I have to thank my friend Kay, her daughters Nora and Phoebe and my splendid daughter Hillary for helping to roughly count the tesserae by color to get an idea how much STONE I need of each color. For this I made a color scheme and then these darlings spent several hours of their precious holiday crouching over the full size print out which was spread on the floor in our holiday house…. In mosaic restoration class which I attended last year at the Conservation- and Restoration school of Ankara University we learned to take an average weight for 1 tesserae, to get somewhat of an idea about how much of each color we would need. I took 4g per tesserae and it will be 56 kg for the total mosaic! Then, one morning, I set off early to Balikesir, 100 km east of Ayvalik to 3 marble dealers. I was tipped off to one of  them by …

…. now, what shall be the design? I am so enchanted by the animal pictures of the old greek and roman mosaics. Done a couple of bird mosaics for bird baths before and love the way they become alive once modelled with little tesserae!   So the shower/hamam garden extension in our house will get fishes to get the real feel of the sea into this little room! The most realistic and lively depicts of fish I find in the poseidon mosaic at the Zeugma Museum in  Gaziantep in south east Turkey which I visited several times in the past years From a photo I cut the figures with photo shop and played around where the fishes should swim in our shower in Ayvalik taking into consideration view points and dynamics. I wanted them to go up the wall of the hamam benches too – look at this 3D picture! Firat (our architect) and I sat for several hours with photoshop, autoCAD, water and wine to make the fish pictures movable and insert them into …