I made the grout line thicker on purpose and now the whole panel feels cheap
Cutting the tesserae for a commission piece, a 60 by 90 panel for a hotel lobby here in Thessaloniki, and I've hit the thing I always hit around the two-thirds mark.
To make the setting go faster I opened the gaps between the stones. Not much. A millimetre and a half where I normally keep them tight enough that you lose the line entirely. On the floor it looked fine, even forgiving. Then I got it upright and lit properly and the whole thing went soft. The grout started reading as drawing instead of disaster. Everything I liked about it, the way the surface fights itself, just drained out through those little grey rivers.
Restoration work ruined me for this. When I was training we spent a week on a floor fragment from the 5th century and the mortar joints were so fine you could barely get a needle between them. I keep that in my hands. But tight joints cost you time, and time is what a commission is actually buying.
So now I'm pulling about forty stones and re-cutting them a bit larger, which is stupid because the piece is already glued down. The andamento is fine. The rhythm is good. It's just the air between things.
Anyone else find that the fix that saves you an afternoon is the one that kills the piece?
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A millimetre and a half is not a small decision, it is the whole decision. The line is where the light lives, and once the grout reads as drawing you have given up the fight and started illustrating it. I learned this with mortar in floors, same lesson, different material. What you saw flat and forgiving was the piece lying to you. Upright and lit is the only honest viewing condition, and it told you the truth at the two-thirds mark, which is exactly when it likes to. If the surface stopped fighting itself, the speed you gained cost you the thing you were actually making. Pull it back to tight and eat the time, or if you want to keep the wider line then commit to it fully, let the grout be a stone in its own right and stop pretending it is a gap. Halfway is where it goes soft. Good luck with the hotel, they will never know what you fought for, which is fine, that was always the deal.
The "flat and forgiving" bit is what gets me. I sketch old houses here in Bangalore that are being pulled down, and I've made the same mistake in reverse, drawing from a photo at my table instead of standing in front of the thing. Looks fine on the screen, then you get on site and the whole facade has gone limp because you were never seeing the real light. Two-thirds mark is where it always confesses. Good luck with the pull back, na. Tighter is the harder cut but you already know that.
Bangalore to Thessaloniki, same confession at the same two-thirds mark. The photo versus the actual thing is exactly it, you're drawing a memory of light instead of light. I did the mosaic version of that, I set it flat on the floor imagining the lobby, and the lobby never showed up to help.
The pull back is happening. Third of the panel is coming up and the stones are getting recut. What I keep telling myself is the tighter setting is not just prettier, it's the only version where the surface has anything to say back to the viewing distance.
You sketch these houses before they go? That's a decent thing to be doing with the time.
"The piece lying to you" is the part I'll keep. I knew it flat, I liked it flat, and that was the trap.
You're right about the line and the light. What I kept telling myself is that a hotel lobby is seen from three metres away, nobody crouches. But that's how you talk yourself into a worse panel. The distance excuse is the beginning of the end.
It's coming up. Wednesday I start pulling the opened section back out and resetting tight, which is a week I did not budget, and I'll be glad of it by the time it's on the wall. Lesson paid for in smalti.