This project focuses on three areas related to the use of colours in Byzantium. It engages with the practical issues of the Byzantine manufacture of colours, the methodological questions of finding a standard vocabulary for mosaic colours and the ways in which the Byzantines themselves referred to them.

Technical expertise for the project will be provided by the ArchaeologyDepartment of the School of Historical Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who have developed computer-based methods for the investigation of lighting effects on wall mosaics. Liaisons with the British Museum and the National Gallery in London are also underway which have considerable experience in working with colours in Medieval and early Renaissance works of art.

Liz James has been awarded a one-year Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for 2003. Her project, 'The composition of Byzantine glass mosaics' sets out to consolidate findings about the compositional nature of Byzantine glass tesserae, to allow them to be compared in terms of nature and site of manufacture. The hope is that the findings will allow for a discussion of the nature of mosaic production and its implications for our understanding of Byzantine manufacturing processes and trade patterns over time across the period of the Empire.

The project hopes to answer some of the questions behind the visual reconstruction of a church, to look at why the mosaics are made in these colours of glass and where that glass came from, thus placing the monument more firmly into its historical context. The objective of this study is to discover the answer to practical questions about tesserae manufacture and places of production, to create a database of this information, and to produce a substantial article. It also seeks to work out a blueprint of questions and issues for restoration work, which may encourage more research on the compositional characteristics of glass tesserae by scholars engaged in archaeological work.

Events
2005: Colloquium on Colour in Art, University of Sussex.

Contact: Liz James