Perdomo Smalti

We are very pleased that Mosaic Workshop now stocks a range of Mexican smalti. This versatile material offers a great counterpoint to classic Italian smalti; the colour palette is slightly different - being perhaps a little earthier - but the main difference is the amazing variegation and mottling of the smalti surfaces which gives an incredibly lively and characterful finish to mosaic.

The first art glass factory in the Americas

Mexican smalti are made at the famous Cuernavaca factory founded by Elpidio Perdomo in 1949. Perdomo was not a craftsman by birth or inclination; he came of age during the upheavals of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and joined the forces of Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), fighting for agrarian reform and liberty. When the armed struggle ended, he moved into public life and built a political career, serving as Governor of Morelos state from 1938 to 1942. Keen to stimulate local industry, he reportedly set up the glass manufactory after a chance meeting in Mexico City with an Italian mosaicist. Precarious beginnings saw the family home used as collateral for the business, but production took off when Perdomo’s son Manuel joined the enterprise. Manuel sought technical advice from Italian artisans while also using local know-how to source novel ingredients; the business flourished during the 1950s, becoming a worthy competitor for the Venetian furnaces.

Staff at the new factory, circa 1953. PHOTO ©️ Perdomo family archive

A Mexican artistic identity

The 1950s were an incredibly significant decade for the arts in Mexico. Drawing inspiration from pre-Hispanic artefacts, colonial history, and modern political ideals, a generation of artists who had survived the Revolution worked to develop a means of artistic expression that reflected the character of their country, while also commemorating its people's past and ongoing struggles.

Objects such as this spectacular pectoral (probably made between 1400 and 1520 BCE) show how mosaic was used to decorate the most prestigious ritual objects in pre-Hispanic Mexico. Covered in turquoise and oyster-shell tesserae, it was worn across the chest (it's 43cm across). PHOTO © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons licence.

The muralist movement, led by Diego Rivera (1886-1957), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) and José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), brought art that blended social realism with pre-Columbian symbolism into public spaces. All three men were famous for their large-scale murals, but Rivera and Siqueiros also adopted the medium of mosaic, recognising its unrivalled ability to create monumental artworks that would last for generations. Mosaic could make architecture speak, whether the works were in interior spaces or adorning a building's entire exterior. Perdomo’s company, Mosaicos Venecianos de México, was on hand to provide them with the durable, beautiful local materials they needed.

Detail of Diego Rivera's 1956 mosaic of the Juchitán River in the vestibule at the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. PHOTO © Wikimedia Commons/José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0

Diego Rivera created this mosaic, entitled 'Exekatlkalli' (House of the Winds), on the facade of his patron Dolores Oomedo's home in Acapulco in 1956

Mosaic by David Alfaro Siqueiros, 1952–53, on the Central Administration Building at University City, Mexico City. See the little person looking up at it for scale. Visible in the background is the University Library building with its massive mosaic by Juan O'Gorman, 1951–53. PHOTO: ©️ Encyclopedia Britannica

Still a family firm dedicated to quality and innovation

Today, Mosaicos Venecianos de México supplies smalti in more than 500 colours for artistic, architectural, and commercial applications worldwide (we have 40 individual colours and 13 mixes). The company is still family led, still based at its first home in Cuernavaca, and now has a team of just over 100 staff including our wonderful contact, Cindy Cuadra.

Vitreous glass tiles ping off the production line. These are the ones we stock under the Kolorines name. PHOTO ©️ Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico

What sets Mexican smalti apart?

Traditional smalti-making methods perfected on Murano are used at Perdomo, but because of the inclusion of local minerals, the use of different production techniques and, crucially, the distinctive way in which the smalti are cut and laid, the look is significantly different.

Colour is more varied because of the adoption of metal oxides and mineral ingredients not used in Italy, and because the crucibles in which the glass is melted are not cleaned out between batches… this encourages wonderfully painterly streaking and marbling (and, of course, makes it inevitable that colour between batches varies, so if you're shopping do buy all you need in one go).

A different approach to cutting and laying

Additionally, although the molten glass is poured just like that for Venetian smalti, the resulting ‘tortilla’ is pressed so that it is thinner than an Italian one (5–7mm instead of ~9 mm). Once cold, the tortilla is cut using a hammer and hardie into irregular chunks between 1cm and 2cm square.

With Mexican smalti, the outer surfaces of the slab (the top and bottom formed during pouring) become the visible face of the tesserae. These surfaces retain evidence of the molten glass’s flow, cooling patterns, and colour mixing, which creates a lively and varied appearance. By contrast, with Italian smalti the interior of the glass - revealed when it is riven apart - is used to form the mosaic surface. These inner surfaces are more uniform and denser in colour, producing the smoother, more consistent appearance associated with Venetian glass. Elpidio Perdomo perfected this less labour-intensive technique as a cost-saving strategy and gave us a wonderful material quite unlike Italian smalti.

VIEW PERDOMO SMALTI