Tile From Italy Rises and Shines

Anyone who’s been dazzled by the more than 10,000 mosaic tiles in the basilica in Venice’s St. Mark’s Square or walked over colorful mosaic floors in Rome knows that this 5,000-year-old technique and the images it can so easily depict has the power to amaze and amuse.

Yet today, most mosaic tile work is neutral and unimaginative, the result of makers catering to builders rather than designers.

“The tile industry in general isn’t known for being designer-oriented,” says Doug Harris, national sales manager of Bisazza Italian Glass Mosaic Tile.

Bisazza, based in Italy, is working to change that, along with a number of other U.S. glass mosaic tile companies, including Ann Sacks in Oregon, Oceanside Glasstile in Carlsbad, Calif., and Walker Zanger in Sylmar.

“Over the last five years, glass tile use has been growing. Designers are always looking at new materials, even if they’re old,” says Brian Flynn, president of California Art Tile in the Pacific Design Center. “Bisazza is the world leader in innovative designs and colors.”

Fabio Novembre, art director of Bisazza, created the company’s latest collection, Smalto, by adding streaks of enamel to individual glass squares. This technique, like the others Bisazza uses, is based on an ancient Venetian glass-making method.

The company developed an industrialized process that can replicate and mass-produce what was once crafted by hand; each tile is uniformly square, with cushioned and beveled edges and no sharp corners.

Some of Bisazza’s mosaics, however, are still partially done by hand, among them “Oro,” which is made by placing 24-karat gold leaf between two layers of glass.

To illustrate the versatility of glass mosaics, the 1998 Academy Awards’ Governor Ball featured two 8-foot-high Oscar statues covered with more than 80,000 3/8-inch glittery Oro squares.

In San Francisco, a 5-by-7-foot portrait of the late George Harrison is being generated from a computer image, with each pixel transformed into a colored mosaic tile. “We can take any computer picture and turn it into a trompe l’oeil-like representation,” Harris says.

At the recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, Marco Braga, Bisazza’s graphic designer, came up with some fashion-friendly ideas to help designers rethink mosaic use.

“Pois” has giant polka-dots in red, blue and black, while “Tartan” translates textile plaid into glass, and “Pulsar” resembles an Op Art work.

To help interior designers visualize glass mosaic use, Liz Patterson, manager of Mission Tile West in Santa Monica, has installed Bisazza’s “Le Sfumature” in viola, a violet color blend merging from light to dark. “We put this wall in because glass mosaics are so popular right now. People like their textures and durability.”

As for toughness, glass mosaics have 0% absorption and so are impervious to damage from acids or chlorine, making them perfect for swimming pools and outdoor use.

They are also resistant to UV rays and thus fade resistant. On the design side, their shimmery, translucent look complements water, which is why they’re often used in bathrooms as well as pools.

“The downside to glass mosaics is they can be tricky to install and thus expensive. You have to learn by doing, not from a book,” says Flynn, of California Art Tile.

With prices for Bisazza glass mosaic ranging from $8.70 to $48.50 a square foot, depending on color, materials and elaborateness of the design, a large project can prove costly.

The richness in colors can’t be duplicated in ceramic tiles, however, and the small scale of the individual tiles allows enough flexibility to cover almost any shape.

The company was founded in 1956 in Vicenza, Italy, by Renato Bisazza. Renato’s sons, Piero and Marco, have joined the business and are in the process of expanding it through showrooms in New York, Barcelona and Milan. A Paris showroom will open soon, and Los Angeles is being considered for another. The company’s biggest market is still in Europe, but Bisazza hopes American designers will increasingly begin to recognize the merits of this ancient craft.

Locally, Bisazza mosaics may be seen at Mission Tile West, 1207 4th St., Santa Monica, and 853 Mission St., Pasadena, as well as at California Art Tile, Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, and at Walker Zanger, 8750 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, among other locations.

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Kathy Bryant can be reached at kbryant@socal .rr.com.