All posts filed under: Blog posts

Owl, owl

Published by gertrud

I am completely enchanted by this little owl, which was carved from rough marble and granite. Actually, I just wanted to try out a new technique and wasn’t at all sure if it would turn out to be anything worth showing off. In this method, the tesserae are first laid out on a template. Next, apply a thick layer of tile adhesive to a second, identical template covered with plastic sheeting. As a result, the adhesive does not bond to the substrate, and once dry, the finished mosaic can be removed as a single piece and transferred to a permanent backing. Since I deliberately wanted to place the tesserae at an angle to suggest the softness and fluffiness of a bird’s plumage, this technique proved to be ideal. The owl’s head came together surprisingly quickly. Then my gaze wandered to my woodpile. The bark of an olive tree from Ayvalık seemed perfectly suited to capturing the structure of the plumage. In addition, there was a cedar shingle, the kind traditionally used in the United States …

Lion’s Head Mosaic

Published by gertrud

The first half of 2026 was a busy and focused time for me. Once the studio in Paris was set up at the end of January, I began work on the lion’s head mosaic. Inspired by a lion depicted in a floor mosaic in Piazza Armenina in Sicily and an exhibition by M.C. Escher in Paris that I had seen in January, I set to work. Fortunately, I have a close friendship with graphic designer Kersten von Sohlern, with whom I have been collaborating since my time in China. She resized the lion’s head so that it would fit four times on my space, and I can still lay it out using the smallest possible tesserae. When designing mosaic patterns, it is important to visualize the size of the material and then arrange the motifs across the surface. This was followed by 45 hours of cutting the tesserae to size and arranging them according to the design. This is my favorite part of making mosaics. The often difficult tinkering of the design phase is over; …

Next summer – Ayvalik!

Published by gertrud

How about a vacation in Turkey in a beautiful old stone house with a mosaic floor in the bathroom? We rent out our summer house in the quaint town of Ayvalik on the North Aegean coast of Turkey. https://www.manzara-apartments.com/en/mozaikli-ev-en/# I lived in Turkey with my family 12 years ago and bought this summer house there. For me, this was a great opportunity to create a mosaic floor in the classic style. So many people were interested in it during production that I started this blog. The house is situated on a hill in the middle of the small town of Ayvalik, which has remained very unspoilt and has not yet seen much international tourism. There is a market twice a week where the whole town is filled with families from the surrounding villages and you can buy everything from fresh local vegetables, socks and underpants to hand-carved spoons made from olive wood. And not just the spoons, but of course the oil and the olives themselves, as Ayvalik is located in Turkey’s largest olive-growing region. …