What is smalt? Simply put, pieces, cubes, or multi-colored glass plates. But seriously, this is a topic for the article. What is smalt, we will consider below.
Types of colored glass
- Transparent has a strong shine, pure deep color, plays and shimmers.
- Opal has a bright color, is distinguished by a special brilliance and richness of colors.
- Spotted is obtained by fusing glasses of various colors.
- Gold and silver. Between two layers of glass put the necessary plate.
The color of a modern artist can be selected from a huge number of shades that give glass salts and oxides of various metals. And all this is glass smalt.
Qualities of smalt
1. It glows from within the material itself.
2. Very durable (Roman mosaics made of smalt have not lost their attractiveness over millennia). She is not afraid of dampness and frost, which allows her to be used as a universal external and internal finishing material.
3. The traditional size of the elements is 5 x 5 x 5 mm. But it can be any geometric shapes - ovals and different polyhedrons. To obtain such forms, glass chips are heated and molded. Now it’s becoming clearer what smalt is.
Smalt itself is quite expensive, and manual labor, which is used in the manufacture of the product, further increases the price.
Making smalt
Finished glass is crushed into powder. It can be both color, even bottle, and colorless. Borax, nitrate, cobalt, cryolite are added in various percentages and sent to a cooking furnace. Then the liquid hot mass without inclusions of air bubbles is poured into molds. Then annealing and grinding are performed. This is what smalt is.
The history of smalt
Its history goes back to the beginning of our era, to ancient Rome. It came to him from Greece and it was through him that it spread widely. The Romans loved the spectacular new material. Although, when they made glass pebbles, they did not always imagine what color they would turn out.
The technology has not been tested. They loved to lay the floors, walls of their villas, palaces and termas, as well as paths in gardens, with colorful pebbles. But besides smalt, small pebbles and pebbles were often used in the mosaic. This technique can be used as long-lasting and very effective in our time. A wall, ceiling or smalt floor will transform your apartment. And if you use it in the home gym, then the floor will not wear out.
Byzantium is another matter. In the eastern Roman Empire, masters reached considerable heights. Their work is more sophisticated compared to antique. Christian temples were richly ornamented.
Complicated compositions on themes taken from the Bible were created on the walls. Window and doorways were also decorated. The laying of stones became more elegant, small stones were used. Gold smalt was widely used as a background. Multi-colored smalt has become the main technique of decoration. Mosaic panels were created from it. Numerous workshops smelted smalt. The masters had their secrets, and the number of shades that they could get was more than a hundred. Byzantium even adopted a law under which the export of smalt was controlled by the state. By the middle of the fifteenth century, Byzantium was gone, and the production of smalt continued in Italy. It was an expensive production, and it was not widespread.
In Russia and in Russia
Together with Baptism, the princes of Kievan Rus drew attention to the decoration of their churches. Archaeologists have found at least one smalt workshop for making icons.
At a later time, M.V. was engaged in the manufacture of smalt. Lomonosov. His work was not found at that time, although he fully developed glass melting and mosaic laying. Much later, when Auguste Monferand built the St. Isaac's Cathedral, the mosaic of smalt was used in the manufacture of icons and other elements of the cathedral, occupying about six hundred square meters. m
Another example of the use of smalt is associated with a difficult date - the untimely death of Emperor Alexander III. Then the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built. The interior was filled with mosaics of smalt.
What else is made of smalt
First of all, monumental panels. They can be located on the wall or ceiling. The street part is decorated against the wall, the facade, as a rule, or the interior. If the panel is from mosaics, then it is very often laid out from smalt.
On the wall or ceiling of a public building, it really looks very majestic, especially if the artist laid in it a deep content, large-scale and thorough.
In Soviet times
Vivid examples of the use of mosaic panels made of smalt are the Moscow metro stations. For example, take two: Chekhovskaya (1987) and Kievskaya (1954). The pylons that support the vaults on Chekhovskaya are invisible. The lining is made of white marble. But the track walls are a real work of art. They are made in the style of the Florentine mosaic and present us with scenes from the works of A.P. Chekhov (see above). The Kievskaya station looks completely different.
It has eighteen pompous pylons on which the Ukrainian people are glorified. As well as working peasants and ordinary people who celebrate May 1 and Victory Day. It is impossible not to note the panel from the mosaic of the work of Pavel Korin at the Novoslobodskaya station. It is called "World Peace."
The majestic woman (they assume that the model was the wife of the architect of this station), who goes towards people and holds a child in her arms, is depicted against a five-pointed star, a sickle and a hammer, golden sheaves of ears of corn. Doves curl overhead. And there was a portrait of Stalin, which was removed after the XX Congress. The world is thus expressed in large generalized forms. The builders tell the legend that the architect and artist, following the tradition, laid coins under the first glass. The Korina group also worked at the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya station, performing 8 mosaic panels. It was in 1951, so their common theme is the victories of the Russian people in various wars. There are many more examples at metro stations, because many of them look like palace halls.
Smalt paintings
They can be safely placed in bathrooms, kitchens and, of course, hanged in rooms, halls, hallways. This can be either an original theme or a copy from paintings by famous Russian and foreign masters.
In any room, smalt paintings look organically, extremely unusual and spectacular. The disadvantages include only their high price. But it is justified by the cost of material and delicate, painstaking handmade work.
This ancient technique is now receiving a new revival. Updating the design of the room, it is good to remember about it and take advantage of its indisputable advantages.