An other gorgeously simple Roman mosaic pattern.

This is an other simple and elegant pattern. Plain bicolor, it has been used in many places.

It could be made of 2 different stones, a pale marble and a dark greyish-blue stone for example, as used in the Villa of a commander of the Praetorian guard

Just like Roman Tile -001, It is composed of single squares aligned in rows and columns, and can be easily generated by horizontal and vertical translations of a basic element :

 

It can also be represented in a matrix or spreadsheet as follows :

This type of digital representation is extremely interesting for it allows to easily create huge surfaces. However, it can only be used accurately to represent patterns built from vertical lines – squares or rectangles. For more intricate patterns, graphic representations are much easier to use.

Even when they were working with glass, ancient mosaicists were limited in their choice of colors. They would not have created a Roman mosaic with the above colors ! But I have used this type of colors to create my Amba Aradam silk scarf.

I explained in my previous post Roman Tile-001 how you can create a graphic background based on such a pattern to use it in your mosaics or other graphic project.

With a little imagination you can create some amazing variations and use them for many different purposes.

Feel free to use this pattern for your own projects.

I believe in sharing. I myself use many excellent computer programs available for free. This is my little contribution to the community of people who believe we should not let big companies highjack online content. Such companies (like Getty.edu, Alamy, 123RF, etc…) sometimes appropriate the work of independent creators or public domain images; sneakily prevent public access to the original images and then sell those images to whoever does not have time to look for their original free versions.