Pyrrha's
Roman
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title page

meet Pyrrha

mosaic making

Roman gardening

Bignor villa

Roman tombstones

Roman inscriptions

Latin poetry

Latin language

Spoken Latin

Harry Potter Latin Quiz

Classical Computers Quiz

Classical Face Quiz

links to other sites

[the real Medusa!]

mosaic making
preparing to move the sections

Malcolm and I had spent about 40 hours in total sticking the design onto the brown paper. The next stage was to invite my parents and a friend, Mark, to help us to lay it in position. Four of us worked fairly non-stop for 5 hours, with my mother bringing us refreshments at regular intervals and videoing the activity.


[cutting sections] Using a craft knife, we cut the design into manageable sections (about 12 - 18 inches across), keeping important parts of the picture in the same section and cutting along lines of the same colour where possible.

We numbered the sections on the reverse of the brown paper and made identifying marks along the cut edges.
[watch out! we're moving the face.]


What a relief - the tesserae didn't fall off the paper when we moved the face!

Now the sections can be carried out one at a time to where they will be laid.


[Dad measuring]
The concrete base had already been prepared with a soakaway for drainage in our sunken patio.

Now it's important to find the exact middle for Medusa's face and to mark concentric circles and radius datum lines at 90 degrees to each other.


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