If ever there were a sign that minimalism is over, it might be the red-and-gold interiors at the recently opened Printemps in New York. With its Red Room featuring a glittering “red river” mosaic floor, the new department store draws visitors in with its opulent, maximalist luxury.
To design the space, interior designer Laura Gonzalez was tasked with reimagining One Wall Street into a shopping experience luxurious enough to tempt shoppers down to the Financial District. So, she commissioned long-time collaborators and mosaic masters Pierre Mesguich and Kautar Larif of MesguichMosaik KLD to embed the floor with a winding collage of ruby and crimson to match the walls originally designed by muralist Hildreth Meière in 1931. The project—years in the making—was ambitious. The result? Well, let’s just say that ever since it opened in late March, images of the Red Room and its elaborate mosaics have flooded social media feeds and interior design websites alike.
Of course, mosaics haven’t always been met with such enthusiasm. “When I started 40 years ago, mosaic was not popular,” Mesguich notes. “It was considered old-fashioned.”
What’s behind the sudden interest, then? Perhaps the increasingly technological world has something to do with it. Mesguich compares our current craving for craftsmanship to the way Art Nouveau emerged in the early 1900s as a response to the Industrial Revolution. “Today we have the same huge progress in technology.”
Francis Sultana, a London-based interior and furniture designer who recently completed a villa in France with eight mosaic bathrooms in partnership with Mesguich, puts it this way: “Mosaics are more than decoration; they can be artisanal and yet be art.”
They also require a careful, creative calibration. “Everything is done by hand,” Mesguich says, explaining that he and Larif personally sketch all of the studio’s designs, then work with their team to cut the raw material and meticulously place it by hand. “It’s a time-consuming activity. Mosaics sit as a bridge between architecture and the arts.”
Mesguich first began to work with mosaics when designing a fountain to install in a city square he was planning. He immediately fell in love with the creative act. “When you’re a town planner, it takes years to see what you imagine as there are so many restrictions and regulations,” he notes. “With mosaic, you are free. Totally free.”
After that first fountain, Mesguich trained in a studio while continuing to work as an architect until he could go full time into mosaics six years later. He credits the Peter Marino-designed Guerlain store on Champs-Élysées, where he installed gilded floor-to-ceiling mosaics that feel like “walking into the bottle of perfume” as his first big break.
He joined forces with Larif in Barcelona in 2010, finding that their respective approaches to mosaic were perfectly complementary. Mesguich is incredibly precise, bringing to life exactly what a client requests; Larif takes a more artistic approach, using glass off-cuts and shards to create one-of-a-kind works in unexpected color combinations. With showrooms in Paris and Barcelona and a team of 16, the pair works across commercial and residential projects, delivering beautiful spaces for the likes of Aman, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Patek Philippe, and others.
Still, the duo notes that never in company history has there been a demand like they’re experiencing now. With 30 projects in the works, Larif and Mesguich are booked out for the next two years.
It’s not just Mesguich and Larif who have noticed the renewed interest in mosaic. Last week at NYCxDesign, renowned Italian mosaic company Bisazza opened a flagship store in New York City—its first in the United States. “There’s a real appetite here for high-quality materials and for bold, design-driven interiors,” emphasizes the company’s head of communications, Rossella Bisazza.
Mosaics have also entered the art world in a meaningful way. Andrés Reisinger’s work titled “Mosaic Sky with Apples, 2024” showed at the Nilufar Gallery in Milan last year, while figurative artist Nicolas Party designed the stunning mosaic pool at Le Sirenuse in Positano.
As with any craft that requires a generous investment of time, skill, and precision, it should come as no surprise that the price point for mosaics can be hefty. “Mosaics are a luxury finish, but can make an impact at any scale,” says Mesguich. But Larif points out that they have designed smaller projects as well—be it backsplashes or accent walls—that nevertheless have transformative power. To wit, she’s soon launching a collection of mosaic coffee tables and art that are perfect for those who dream of glittering glass and stone but can’t install a mosaic permanently.
Piece by piece, the mosaic moment seems to have become a movement. Gonzalez, who has long used mosaics in her projects—which include many Cartier flagship stores around the world as well as her opulent five-story headquarters and atelier in Paris—says this about the renaissance: “Mosaic is the art of precision and poetry. It’s where color meets craftsmanship, pattern finds rhythm, and materiality becomes a tactile language that speaks through every intricate detail.” If that means eschewing minimalism for maximalist mosaics, so be it.