Mosaic sizes and coverage
A mosaic is small pieces set face up on a mesh backing so that a hundred of them can be handled as one object. The commonest listed size in this range is 12 by 12 inches, and there that figure is the sheet: a foot square of mesh carrying anything from four pieces to forty.
But a large group here is listed as 2 by 2, and nobody sells a two inch square of mesh. There the figure is the piece and the sheet is still about a foot across. A third group, the 3 by 6 subway pieces, is neither: each of those covers an eighth of a square foot, which is a single tile rather than a sheet of anything.
So the size field cannot be trusted to tell you what arrives in the box, and the coverage figure published against every product can. Around one square foot means a sheet. A small fraction means a single piece. It is the one number in this part of a catalog that means the same thing on every product.
Sheet dimensions
Scattered through this range are sheets listed a fraction under a foot in both directions, and others at shapes like 12 by 10. They look like manufacturing sloppiness and they are two different deliberate things.
The ones just under twelve inches are the common case, and the missing fraction is the joint. If a sheet were a full twelve inches the gap between two sheets would be wider than the gaps inside them, so the sheet is made slightly small and the difference reappears as an even joint at the seam. That is why a grid mosaic is 11 and a bit rather than 12.
The genuinely odd shapes are a different story. A herringbone, a picket or an arabesque repeats over a distance that is not a round number of inches, so the sheet gets cut where the repeat lands. Those dimensions are the pattern telling you where it starts over.
Shapes and patterns
Squares and rectangles are the bulk of it, as always. Beyond them sits a list no other format offers: hexagon, penny round, picket, arabesque, basketweave, herringbone, chevron and staggered joint.
A few of them do exist at full size. Hexagons in particular are made as six and eight inch tiles, and there is a run of them in the wider catalog. The rest stay small, because an awkward outline is a manufacturing problem that gets cheaper as the piece gets smaller: at mosaic scale the shapes can be cut in volume and mounted in a jig, which is why the vocabulary is so much longer down here.
Pebble mosaic
Among the stone here is a run of natural pebble: river stones sorted by size and color and set on mesh, with no shaping and no squaring involved. They come in greens, grays and mixed blends, and the sorting is the whole of the manufacturing.
It is the one product in a tile catalog whose pieces were found. Everything else here was made, and the difference shows. No two sheets are alike, the surface is not level in the way a cut tile is level, and both of those are the point.
Curves, falls and shower floors
A rigid tile has to sit on a plane. A mosaic does not, because each piece is independent and the mesh between them flexes. That belongs to how the sheet is built, and it has nothing to do with what the pieces are made of. It is also the whole reason the format survives.
It is what lets a sheet follow a fall to a drain, turn the inside of a curve, or wrap the edge of a step without a cut piece on the corner. The room that needs it most is a shower, which the bathroom tiles page covers from the room's side.
Materials
Glass is the largest material group here, with porcelain behind it, then marble and ceramic. Metal, clay and granite appear in small numbers.
Glass leads because a mosaic is the one format that suits it: it cannot go large and it cannot go underfoot, and neither limit matters at this scale. Marble is the interesting one further down. Marble mosaic is where the stone finishes are worked hardest, since every small piece is cut, faced and set individually: honed, tumbled, polished and rock face all appear at this scale. The marble tiles range covers the same stone in larger formats, where a single piece carries the whole figure.
Multicolor and blends
White leads, then gray and beige, which is the order most tile ranges follow. What this format adds is multicolor: blends that put several colors on the same sheet, which sit higher up the list here than they do on a range of full size tile.
A single large tile has to commit to one color. A mosaic does not, so the blends, the gradients and the mixed stone sheets are things only this format can offer. It is also why a mosaic sample is worth looking at as a whole sheet, since one piece of a blend tells you nothing about the blend.
Seams between sheets
Sheets meet each other, and where they meet the spacing between pieces has to match the spacing inside a sheet. When it does, the surface reads as one continuous field. When it does not, the eye finds the twelve inch grid immediately and cannot unsee it.
It is the detail that decides whether a mosaic wall looks laid or looks tiled, and it is a conversation to have before the work starts, since nothing about it is adjustable afterwards.
Where mosaic tile is used
Most of this range is also carried by the backsplash tiles collection, which is the room view of nearly the same products. Showers, niches, accent strips and small floors take up most of the rest.
For the format on a wall generally, the wall tiles page covers what a wall asks for. For the stone versions specifically, the stone tiles range sets out how quarried material behaves once it has been cut this small.
