GALLERY

                    The King's Head

This was Kim's first attempt at mosaic, made when she came on one of my courses. The human face, though so familiar to us all, is surely one of the most challenging subjects to achieve successfully in mosaic.
Skin tones are particularly difficult, given that the limited range of colours means that one's palette is so restricted. The fact that kim succeeded first time, and so perfectly, is a testament to her great artistic ability. The gold smalti, though used sparingly, lifts the whole piece and leaves us in no doubt that it is a king that we are looking at. The wonderful stylization owes much to the Byzantine mosaics which Kim saw in the church of St Sophia in Salonika, northern Greece.

Designer and maker: Kim williams
   Size: 23 cm (9 in) square
    Method : Direct
  Medium: Vitreous glass and gold smalti

Roman Paving Slab

This simple but effective paving slab is derived from a Roman design. The diamond in the middle, with its opus regulatum flowing at 45 degrees to the rest of the mosaic, draw one's attention to the centre of the slab. This is an ideal design to repeat and make up as a chequerboard, reversing the black and white areas for each alternate square. Or if you wanted to make a herb garden, you could leave each alternate square for earth, and plant with a different herb. Sometimes on Roman floors, different chequerboard designs are themselves arranged in a chequerboard pattern.

   Desinger and maker: Martin Creek
      Size: 25 cm (10 in) square
        Method: Indirect
        Medium: Vitreous glass

   Chess Board
I am a keen chess player. I also collect and enjoy making my own chess sets and boards.
  The subtlety of marble is such that even a very basic design like this has its own natural beauty. In fact, as any chess player will tell you, a busy design is far too distracting if the grey matter is to do its work properly.
  In this case, it is essential to make the mosaic indirect if you want to play on it. othewise the pieces won't be able to stand up. Incidentally, the way to calculate if you have the right size pieces for the board is to lay the king on its side across the squares. The King's height
should measure exactly two squares long.

Desinger and maker: Martin Creek
  Size: 26.5 cm (10 3/8 in) square
   Method: Indirect
   Medium: marble

Abstract Mirror

This mirror is terribly in design but very cheerful. It would even up any bathroom. The soft pastel greys are visually pushed back, allowing the red, orange and blue tesserae to stand out. White grout was used in this case, to keep the overall effect light.

Designer and Maker: Kim Williams
  Size: 26.5 cm (10 3/8 in) square
  Method: Direct
  Medium: Vitreous glass

White Flamingo

The design for this mosaic was inspired by a visit to the zoo. On seeing the flamingo, my son remarked, 'Daddy - look at that bird sitting on a stick!' Back home, I immediately drew the flamingo more or less as he appears here in the mosaic. The concentric circles of mosaic echo the ripples we saw on the surface of his pool.

  Desinger and maker: Martin Creek
  Size: 66 cm (26 in) diameter
   Method: Indirect
   Medium: Vitreous glass

Pink Flamingo

This plaque was commissioned as a companion piece to the Whit Flamingo and they now hang in coy, flirtatious splendour on the wall of a format dining room in a city townhouse.
I felt that the original flamingo was a male and so tried to make this one female and sufficiently different while at the same time obviously part of a pair.
This pair of flamingoes is a good example of how the opus vermiculatum 'cleans up' the edge of a subject (in this case, the flamingo), making a clean line and allowing the opus of the background (here, the water) to 'crash' into it rather than into the bird.

  Desinger and maker: Martin Creek
  Size: 66 cm (26 in) diameter
   Method: Direct
   Medium: Vitreous glass