Specialist repair of Mosaic St Giles Cathedral

We had a very atmospheric mosaic project at St Giles cathedral, Edinburgh. We were working in the St Eloi’s Aisle, undertaking specialist repair to the mosaic.

Nice to work on the Royal Mile again.

The floor had failed in places due to footfall from visitors resulting in the loss of grout to the mosaic. This in turn had enabled tesserae to become loose and loss of the Tesserae from the mosaic. Once we had undertaken site meetings and surveyed the project with cathedral Architect, Mr Chris Bowles, we established the extent and type of repairs needed to the mosaic.

Materials were sourced with the marble matched from Italian Nero and the ceramic tesserae cut from stock we hold in our studio.

Each tesserae was cut with a hammer and hardie and instated to the floor with a lime-based adhesive in the direct method to match the original. Once the tesserae was set flush with the host historic material, natural cement grout was then used to match the original grout of the floor.

A nice prestigious mosaic conservation project.