The Mosaic Ceiling of 1933 at the Royal Ontario Museum and Its Craftsmen: The Untold Story

Abstract

Several factors of a cultural and social nature may help explain the use of mosaics in public buildings in North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The influence of the popular Beaux-Arts movement in architecture and the general revival of classical styles produced an appreciation for decoration and fine detail of the kind provided by mosaics. This collaborative art requires the technical skills of trained craftsmen able to adapt and execute the specifications of architects and the designs of artists, and thus mosaics are feasible only when such artisans are available. This was the case during the period in question. Workers from the Friuli region of northeastern Italy skilled in the techniques of mosaic and terrazzo had migrated all over Europe in the nineteenth century, producing masterpieces like the mosaics in the Opera in Paris. Later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they emigrated to North America, first to the United States and then to Canada.1 Although the literature on mosaics in North America discusses the architects and artists responsible for the works, for example those of 1897 adorning the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., very little is known about the craftsmen.2 The Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje is not alone in commenting ironically that workers responsible for the landmarks of Canadian cities are generally forgotten.3 For one monument, however, namely a major cultural institution in Canada dating from the 1930s, the role of the mosaic craftsmen can be determined. Photographs preserved by their families, documents found in the archives, articles published in old newspapers, together with the oral testimonies of relatives and acquaintances, make it possible to reconstruct the untold story of the craftsmen's contribution.