Mosaic Crafting
(Emily learns the hammer and hardie.)
My Roman Technology middle school classes study the ancient classical world through hands-on, collaborative crafting. We recreate the products and processes of the Romans through experimental archaeology. The concepts taught in the class stress the idea of crafting as skill-based and time-consuming. Students put themselves in the shoes, or sandals, of ancient crafts-people (oftentimes slaves), learn and practice the craft of a particular trade, and reflect on the difficult and often back-breaking labor which produced the awe-inspiring art-work or technology of the ancient classical world.
Our culminating project last school year was a mosaic sundial. Thus, the students focused on learning the craft of stone-cutting and mosaic design. Each student learned to cut marble tesserae with mosaic hammers and hardies (stone-cutting wedges). By watching online videos of expert Roman mosaicist Lawrence Payne @RomanMosaics, with lots of practice, they were each able to cut enough stone to create one piece of the sundial.
(Stone cutting workshop)
Marble cutting was only the beginning of the work though. The students also laid the tesserae in matching designs and experienced using mortar, grout, and other tools of this trade. Last, they spent some time writing about how cool it was to produce something beautiful and useful and also how hard ancient Roman craftspeople worked. Our mosaic sundial reminds us daily of the time, but also of the time that ancient craft took from the lives of its artists.
A-Quincy is proud of his VI.
Laying stone tesserae is hard work!
Our mosaic sundial works! And it’s done!