What’s is the commesso fiorentino technique?
Letizia: It’s a typical Florentine mosaic made out of hard stones that we personally collect along rivers, in woods and old quarries. We slice the rocks in layers of two millimetres thick, then we glue them together with beeswax. It’s a very complicated process. We use it especially to design landscapes.
What about micro mosaic?
Daniele: We melt the glass paste from Murano and pull it to form a long rod shape (like spaghetti). Finally, we cut them into minuscules tiles, even 0.2 millimetres thick. It’s ideal for jewellery and small accessories.
©Fratelli Traversari
What kind of stones do you use?
Letizia: Green jasper, especially to reproduce rivers, onyx for the sky, chalcedony that can be white or yellow-orange, pietra paesina (ruin marble) for the skylines, gabbro for the trees and also lapis lazuli, marble and malachite.
When did you realise this was your passion?
Daniele: We always knew this was our destiny, we didn’t’ want to interrupt a 100-year-old legacy. Growing up, my father taught us everything. I studied Law and my sister Economy, but at the end we just wanted to be in our studio, making wonderful mosaics.