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MONTHLY SUMMARY. 99 



when filled as the tables now are with gay tulips and fragrant 

 hyacinths, an elegant and agreeable object. 



Pavement of the Dais of the Conservatory. — This pavement 



has now been laid down, and perhaps no higher praise can be 

 given to it than that it is in every respect worthy of the architec- 

 tural and other decorations of this beautiful structure. It has 

 been executed by Messrs. Mintou, Hollins, & Co., who have 



liberally given it to the Society at something less than half its 

 actual cost. 



The work is a combination of the manufacture and the de- 

 sign, or rather is the modern imitation of two kinds of mosaic art 



one known as Alexandrine work (opus Alexandrinum), and the 

 other as tesselated work [opus tesselatum). The latter was per- 

 haps the earliest of any known mosaic, and consisted of small 

 cubes of marble sawn or worked by hand into such simple 

 geometrical forms as when combined would form a figure equally 

 geometrical, but of course characterised by greater intricacy. 

 Many very fine specimens of opus tesselatum have been found in 

 this country. The other, or opus Alexandrinitm, was a kind of 

 mosaic introduced after the time of Constantine,-and was used as 

 a pavement in all the rich Italian churches for nearly a thousand 

 years. It was constructed by chasing channels in white marble 

 slabs, and filling them in with dark reddish purple porphyry, or 

 green serpentine. There is a very interesting specimen of this 

 in AVestminster Abbey, referred to the year 1260 ; and one 

 probably still earlier and more purely Italian in style in Can- 

 terbury Cathedral. 



Various attempts have been made to imitate these tesselated 

 pavements, by inlaying stone with coloured cements, and by com- 

 bining different coloured cements, but it was not until about thirty 

 years ago that the plan was hit upon which has since been carried 

 out with so much success. It is to Mr. Henry Hope, of the Deep- 

 dene, that Mr. Digby Wyatt, in a paper on the subject read to 

 the Society of Arts on the 3rd of February, 1 847, chiefly accords 

 the honour of having given the impulse which has led to such beau- 

 tiful results. It was an elaborate Venetian Scagliola, constructed 

 by him by Mr. Blashfield, at the Deepdene, which elicited much 

 admiration from those men of taste who had examined it, attracted 

 attention to the subject, and paved the way for the greater improve- 

 ments which followed. Great advances both in the manufacture 



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