High shine: the glittering mosaics of Rebecca Newnham

This article originally appeared in our January/February 1993 issue. Become a member to discover more Crafts articles from the past, and get unlimited access to our digital archive.

Romance led Rebecca Newnham into making mosaics - she loved the sheer glamour and the mesmeric potential of glass. ‘It’s very seductive stuff,’ says the twenty-five year-old Royal College of Art graduate, sweeping auburn hair from her eyes. ‘Glass is the richest material that a craftsperson could hope for.’

It first hooked the diminutive Newnham when she attended Staffordshire Polytechnic. There, she would sit for hours, watching the glassblowers at work. Eventually, she joined their ranks, producing a range of classic vessels that were embellished with glass enamels: ‘I think I chose glass because of the challenge. To balance the heat and the timing, you learn a special brand of control.’

Although she did not know it at the time, Newnham had entered a family trade. Her great-grandparents, both Czechs, had imported copper-wheel glass engraving to the UK. But, Newnham was not destined to remain a professional glassblower. In 1989, when she entered the RCA, she was already having second thoughts about the craft.

Today, she sits in a sunny, nine-person studio in north London, thinking back to the moment which altered her art for good: ‘I knew I wanted some sort of change, perhaps a stretch in my imagery. Now, I can see I was starting to feel the limitations of blowing glass.’ One afternoon, frustrated while trying to force a change of texture, Newnham simply smashed a piece and started to use it as applique. ‘I grabbed up some plaster bases, and tried to apply the shards. The plaster was heavy and static, but I really loved the effects.’

Continuing to experiment, she discovered Styrofoam, which became the spur to fresh shapes and forms. Newnham would glue large Styrofoam sheets together, then carve the blocks as if she were sculpting. Once these pieces were fibreglassed, she covered them with slivers of glass: ‘Those big blocks were my starting point. Most mosaic-makers like to work by building up. I’m just the opposite: I pare the shape away. Negative space is very important to the way I see.’

Styrofoam was vulnerable, so Newnham learned to treat her forms with a coat of epoxy resin. But, she remained enchanted with the material’s flexibility, and was determined to learn everything about mosaic art. During her summer holidays, she travelled up and down Italy, studying mosaic history: scrutinising murals and visiting every ‘school for tiles’. In a tiny cathedral in Venice, she met a teacher from Birmingham - an enthusiast in mosaic studies who helped her to decode what she saw: ‘He told me that, historically, tesserae were never laid flat. This is because, when someone walks past, it interrupts the light source. That makes the tiles glint and shimmer, it helps them become interactive. Curving the surface allows you to control that movement and its qualities.’

Newnham loved the idea of an interactive form; and she has taken it further by developing a personal code. Each piece she makes will begin from sketches logged in a bulging notebook. An idea is refined and refined, until it can be formally painted. Sometimes, these paintings have texture, in the form of collage. Once her scheme is established on paper, Newnham will abstract it, turning it into pure shape.

Before the shape is sculpted in Styrofoam, she prepares the tesserae. She mixes the coloured enamels herself and then spray-paints them on to a single side of a thin, transparent glass (in addition to coloured enamels, she might also apply gold leaf, aluminium or silver). As Newnham proceeds, she also inscribes ‘the story of the piece’: scratching sentences, drawings and words - even song lyrics - on to the glass.

The result is a wondrous ABOVE: 'Ra' collection: from sinuous mirror-frames, fireplaces and spi- fireplace, railing water-fountains, to a pair of outrageous, outsize steel hearth mirror stilettos. These giant shoes - a personal favourite of with abstracted Newnham’s - perfectly illustrate the maker’s own multi- figures, 150cm levelled approach to her craft: ‘That piece came from an high (1991) interest I had in shoes and sexuality; their shape was abstracted from sketches of women leaning backwards. Because I wanted maximum impact, the tesserae were cut from real mirror. I did them without any grout, too, so that they would resemble a mirror-ball.’

The shoes are a witty, upfront piece. But, in much of Newnham’s other work, the forms are close to abstraction. The resultant ambiguities leave their maker unruffled: for, she professes great faith in visual secrets and hidden history. ‘To me, mosaics are all about depth. Ostensibly, my pieces display forms so simple a child could decode them: here you see a dragon, there you see an arm. Yet, you should also get some sense that other things lurk behind the obvious.’

Like the ancients, Newnham believes that glancing lights and shards of mirror really do contain a ‘flash of the spirit’. ‘I think of it all,’ she says, ‘in extremely ancient, spiritual terms. The balance I am working towards is a balance of the spheres: day and night, yin and yang, masculine and feminine. If I give a piece some meaning in terms of spirit, then I achieve something.’ Hiding her source elements, she says, helps create interaction - by letting every viewer claim the piece on his or her terms.

A piece like Newnham’s Ra fireplace reveals its source (four stages of a human somersault) to few who observe it; but its visceral punch remains undeniable: ‘The hearth is always referred to as “the centre of a home”. But, I wanted to try and capture the fireplace as theatre.’ Even when Newnham’s clients request a literal iconography, she tends to give them a bit more than they bargained for.

A mirror for Nigel Coates is a luminous case in point. The architect requested fleurde-lys, yet ended up with the forms of dragons, arms and a flaming torch. Newnham laughs: ‘I’d just been prowling all round Highgate Cemetery. I saw those extinguished torches, and I wanted to turn them around. Just for the optimism, really.’

In Newnham’s realm of light and wonder, optimism is given substance. (A handwritten quote on her workdesk reads: ‘I do not believe in art for the few/anymore than education for the few/or freedom for the few.’) And, while her largest commissions have been executed for retail shops - huge mirrors, panels and finials - this is one maker who relishes tackling major public works. Her designs for mosaics, metal hangings, signage and lighting for Swan Street in Leeds, part of a new development around the refurbished City Varieties Music Hall, have just won first prize in the Public Arts-run competition.

‘Education is vital to me: history, aesthetics, psychology. But, humour is vital too. I want to fuse all those things and really try to affect people.’ Rebecca Newnham smiles shyly, rubbing a scrap of coloured glass: ‘I want to work on subways and swimming-pools, make fountains and park fixtures. Anything, absolutely anything that people actually use.'