laps of luxury
Decorative mosaics turn indoor and outdoor (this image) swimming pools into living spaces evocative of underwater rooms.
Decorative mosaics turn indoor (this image) and outdoor swimming pools into living spaces evocative of underwater rooms.
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Overall patterns—botanicals, paisleys, stripes, and bold arabesques—in the SICIS archives demonstrate the diversity of glass mosaics. Artisans combine opaque and translucent tile to create the pixelated designs, evocative of wallpaper, stencils, and rugs.
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showroom style: pixelated pools

Art mosaics by SICIS, in SoHo, are making a splash under water.
Type: 
Photography
Author name: 
courtesy of SICIS
Type: 
Text
Author name: 
Marjorie E. Gage

“Sicis breaks all the rules for pools,” says Amy Tanenbaum, SoHo-based executive vice president for the Italian art mosaic company. “We don’t limit ourselves to the expected turquoisetile borders running around the edge, or scenes with leaping dolphins or little branches of coral. SICIS is all about inspiration.”

The company, known as the Art Mosaic Factory, has a deep archive of designs to serve as springboards for custom-patterned pools. But almost any design you can imagine can be translated into a pixelated pattern created from 5⁄8- or 7⁄8-inch chips of glass, stone, or porcelain. “The challenge with designing pool interiors,” says Tanenbaum, “is in understanding how the design is going to read once the water goes in.” Water and light work
together to reflect, refract, magnify, and distort. “By mixing translucent and opaque materials with matte and iridescent finishes, we can design pools with more depth.”