A week on the Tiles
Rob Turner and I spent eight long days getting sun burnt, rain soaked, wind blown and exhausted installing the circular mosaics into the roof terrace at Porth Mawr. It’s an experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Rob usually works alone, but for this install I wanted to be a part of the process.
Each of the mosaics arrived on site in an ordered box, each piece of the larger jigsaw labelled on the back and positioned next to its neighbour for ease. The ground works were cleaned and soon Rob and I found a working rhythm in laying the pieces. We had seven mosaics to install in total, six of which were 1500mm in diameter, the seventh a larger 2800mm across.
Initially the centre point was found on each concrete circle using rulers, set squares, and a blue chalk to mark the lines - much like the Romans did 2000 years ago. Its an old process and it hasn’t changed a bit. Once the centre was agreed, a black mortar was mixed and the central mosaic piece was ‘buttered’ on its back and positioned in place on the ground - dead centre. As more pieces were buttered and laid in place next to the central piece, a line began to emerge running across the mosaic from edge to edge. At this point we needed to make absolutely sure it was straight and true for fear of creating issues later down the line where gaps could occur. The process was time consuming, each mosaic taking at least a day and a half to install into the ground, before the next stage was ready to begin.
Once dried, water was added to the mosaics to remove the backing paper which revealed the beautiful coloured tiles for the first time. Not as simple as it sounded, the water needed time to be absorbed into the paper to make removing it easier, although luckily, this being Caernarfon the rain certainly helped us out here. Soon we had one mosaic finished and ready for a final grouting, a second was in progress of install and other centre points being fixed in place.
We kept the larger central mosaic till almost last, having installed five smaller outer ones to this point. We needed our confidence and a clean clear site to tackle this one, so worked over the weekend alone on the roof carefully laying in place over 100 separate sections to create the final bigger picture - with only seagulls for company.
By day 8 I felt like a pro. Rob worked on the positioning, I was the ‘Buttering King’, and soon our final seventh mosaic was in place and we could sit back and appreciate all the hard work that had gone into the week. A truly epic task, that was greater than the sum of its millions of tiny parts.
