B O O K N E W S
Find Beauty In Breakage
Picture this all-too-familiar scene: Reaching for a favorite serving piece that you stow carefully out of harm's way on the uppermost kitchen shelf, you lose your grip on your prize platter. It tumbles to the tile floor smashing into dozens of pieces. Repair is out of the question, but you don't want to just sweep this piece and all the memories it holds into the dustbin.
Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics by Marlene Hurley Marshall comes to the rescue showing how to give new life to broken treasures through the surprisingly simple folk art technique of creating "shard art" mosaics.
The technique of bringing new life to the ruins of the past goes by many names - pique assiette (a French term meaning "stolen from plate"), memoryware, shard art, putty pots - but whatever it's called, the results are colorful, beautiful, functional works of art that enhance any home or garden. The technique involves covering objects with broken pieces of dishes, glass, pottery, shells, and jewelry then filling spaces between the shards with grout.
Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics doesn't require expensive or hard-to-find equipment and supplies. In fact, as Marshall points out, broken china and pottery are often free for the asking, and other materials can be collected around the home. The grout and mastic adhesive are available at any hardware store. In addition, the technique is easy to learn and projects are limited only by the imagination.
Author Marshall has been working in mosaics for more than 10 years and she explains the technique completely, offering valuable pointers to help even the novice crafter achieve breathtaking results. Call-out boxes throughout the text highlight examples from around the world. From Grandma Prisbey's Bottle Village in California, which includes houses made from more than 100,000 bottles to the Eighth Street Metromover Station in Miami, which features a Carlos Alves mural made from recycled ceramics and tiles, Marshall inspires us with profiles of people who have embraced this folk art.
In addition to projects for the home and garden, Marshall's final chapter includes projects that will inspire the reader's inventiveness. Instructions for creating memorable jewelry from shards, for using sculptural elements to hide a chip in an existing piece, for jewelry projects for children, and for creating a personalized funerary urn push creativity.
As Suzanne Lipschutz, owner of the popular antique store Secondhand Rose in New York City says, "With this art form, your heart won't be broken if you break something. The object made from a mishap has a life." With Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics anyone can make beauty out of breakage.
Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics : Creative Projects for Home & Garden, can be delivered to your door! Ordering is easy, thanks to our association with Amazon.com Books. Just click the link below:
Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics : Creative Projects for Home & Garden
~ Usually ships in 24 hours Marlene Hurley Marshall / Hardcover / Published 1998
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Read an Excerpt from Making Bits & Pieces
Find Beauty in Breakage