In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.

An authoritative account of early Christian and Byzantine art.

This is a catalogue of church, chapel and monastery mosaic pavements discovered within the borders of Israel and the Palestinian Territories (Roman Palestine). Chronologically, it spans the early 4th to 8th centuries, the latter period seemingly designating the cessation of mosaic manufacture in early Christian edifices in Palestine based on current archaeological findings. Sites are arranged alphabetically and according to the four Roman provinces that encompassed the region, and to which it is believed each originally belonged. The primary name chosen for each site (in most cases) correlates with the site name used in the indispensable gazetteer Tabula Imperii Romani Iudaea Palaestina (1994), allowing for relatively simple site identification and cross-referencing. In order to simplify the mosaic design descriptions, the catalogue utilises a system of geometric pattern coding. For each site, a map reference is given for the Israel Grid, followed by a brief outline of its excavation or survey, a thorough description of the pavements including the coding system, inscriptions (if present), a commentary including proposed dates (if given) and bibliography. The indexes include a concise list of occurrences for each pattern code, figural designs and iconoclastic damage; for inscriptions, ecclesiastical titles, named mosaicists and cited provincial dating eras.

Not a step-by-step guide or a how-to book, but merely a collection of photographs, documenting the work of 42 international mosaic artists, designed to inspire. There are a wide range of projects including commercial, home decor and outlets for creative impulses.

This volume consists of 15 articles published between 1991 and 2018. It falls into three sections, reflecting different areas of Liz James’s interests. The first section deals with light and colour and mosaics: four articles considering light and colour in mosaics and the making of mosaics, as well as the question of what it means to define mosaics as ‘Byzantine’ are reprinted. The second brings together four pieces on empresses: their relationships with female personifications and the Mother of God; their roles in founding and refounding buildings; and their employment as ciphers by some authors. Finally, seven papers cover a range of topics: what monumental images of saints in churches might have been for; what the differences between relics and icons might have been; how captions to images can be misleading; why touch was an important sense; how words can sometimes ‘just’ be decorative rather than for reading; why the materiality of objects makes a difference. There is also a brief section of additional notes and comments which add to, update and reflect on each piece now in 2024. Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium will be of interest to scholars and students alike interested in material culture, the depiction of regal women, and the use of relics and icons in the Byzantine Empire.

In this book, a distinguished team of authors explores the way space, place, architecture, and ritual interact to construct sacred experience in the historical cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. Essays address fundamental issues and features that enable buildings to perform as spiritually transformative spaces in ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, early Christian, and Byzantine civilizations. Collectively they demonstrate the multiple ways in which works of architecture and their settings were active agents in the ritual process. Architecture did not merely host events; rather, it magnified and elevated them, interacting with rituals facilitating the construction of ceremony. This book examines comparatively the ways in which ideas and situations generated by the interaction of place, built environment, ritual action, and memory contributed to the cultural formulation of the sacred experience in different religious faiths.