For Designers & Architects
Mosaiclegs is a fabrication studio. We design and hand-cut custom mosaic and deliver it ready to set — we are not a tile supplier and we are not a contractor. If you are specifying mosaic into a set of drawings, this page tells you what you need to know to do it.
Specification sheet
One page covering materials, mounting method, setting responsibility, lead times and what we need from you — sized to drop straight into a drawing set or submittal package. Download the PDF
One Bush Plaza, San Francisco
In 2012 we supplied the mosaic blend for the restoration of the Crown Zellerbach Building — Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1959, a designated San Francisco landmark. Our client was the tile contractor. See the building
What you can specify
Every piece is drawn for the space it goes into. Nothing is selected from a catalog. We work from your drawings, your palette and your schedule — a scheme, an elevation, a photograph of something the client loved, or a sketch on a napkin.
Pool floors, waterline bands, medallions and steps
Architectural murals and feature walls
Powder rooms, entries, backsplashes and borders
Historic pattern reproductions, drawn from period sources
How specifying works
Brief. Send the drawing, the dimensions and the palette. If you have a reference image, send that too — it is usually faster than describing it.
Shop drawing. You get a numbered, titled drawing showing the layout, the border developed, and every corner resolved — issued for design approval, with the repeat fitted to your actual run so no motif is cut through at a corner.
Samples. Color and tone are confirmed against physical samples before anything is cut. Natural stone varies; a screen does not.
Approval, then fabrication. Revisions happen at the drawing stage, not after cutting. Once approved, our own mosaicists cut and assemble the piece by hand and you get progress photographs as it comes together.
Delivery. The finished mosaic arrives paper-faced in numbered sections to a keyed layout, ready to set in the order it was drawn.
Paper-faced, never mesh
This is the part most specifiers want on the record. Our work is mounted paper-faced — the traditional method, with the paper on the face of the tile and nothing between the tessera and the setting bed. The paper is washed off after setting.
Most shops moved to mesh because mesh is faster and cheaper to produce. Mesh leaves a layer of adhesive-backed material under every tile, which affects both the bond and the joint. Paper-faced gives tighter joints and a direct bond to the bed, and it is what the original mosaicists used — the period catalogs called it “mounted on paper.”
Paper-faced is standard on high-end work and competent tile setters handle it routinely. If yours has not worked with it before, we will talk them through it.
Installation — read this before you specify
We fabricate. Setting is a separate trade. Your mosaic arrives paper-faced in numbered sections to a keyed layout, ready for a tile setter. Most clients use their own.
If you don’t have one, we can usually help. Across Southern California — Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Palm Springs — we work with installers and can suggest someone. One of them set our 38-foot mural at San Diego International. Further out we may still know someone; ask, and we’ll tell you straight either way.
Either way we stay involved. If your setter hasn’t handled paper-faced work before, we walk them through the sequence — which is exactly what we did at the airport.
Lead times
Three to six weeks from design approval for smaller pieces — a waterline border, a single medallion, a backsplash — and six to sixteen weeks for larger ones — a full pool floor, an all-tile pool, a large mural — plus seven to ten days shipping. Size and the amount of fine detail set the schedule. Every quotation states the lead time for the piece actually specified. The clock starts at approval, not at first contact — so bring us in early and the drawing stage runs in parallel with the rest of your schedule. Typical costs by piece type are set out in our custom pool mosaic cost guide.
Materials
Hand-cut smalti from the same glass factory that has supplied this studio since 2001, in over a thousand colors. Also vitreous glass, tumbled and honed marble, and gold-leaf glass. Everything specified for pools is pool-grade and UV-rated for submerged and sun-exposed work.
What we need from you
Finished dimensions of the mosaic area — the single thing that most often holds a job up
Substrate and setting conditions, and whether the area is submerged
Palette or scheme, or the finishes it has to sit against
Your schedule — when it needs to be on site
Who is setting it, so the sections can be keyed to suit
Working with us
The studio has been making mosaic since 1998. Work is fabricated by our own mosaicists — not brokered out — and led by a master mosaicist with more than seventeen years at the bench. Recent work includes a mural for San Diego International Airport.
To discuss a project, call (323) 389‑5347 or send the details through the quote form. Studio hours are Monday to Friday 9:00 am–5:00 pm and Saturday 9:00 am–1:00 pm Pacific.
Begin your commission
Send the details of your project, or call (323) 389-5347. Studio hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday, 9am to 1pm, Pacific.