Micro-mosaic jewellery, made with tiny glass beads or cubes, was first launched in Italy in the 19th century.
Hong Kong artist Shan Luk, who has long had a passion for handicrafts, jewellery design, production and lampworking, learnt the techniques from an Italian mosaic expert. She has made regular visits to Venice, Italy, where the technique of glass-fusing originated.
Luk, who works in Sham Shui Po, is the only local artist that knows and teaches micro-mosaic making.
She gave a three-hour workshop to seven Young Post junior reporters - Hollie Chung, Janet Tam, Zoe Chung, Dorothy Yim, Talise Tsai, Florence Too and Jacqueline Leung - and helped each of them design and make micro-mosaic pendants.
The reporters thought it would be a simple, mosaic-by-numbers workshop, where all they had to do was stick multicoloured tiles into their correct places, and come home with a masterpiece - as easy as a pie. Yet they were wrong. The techniques involved were anything but easy. Many of the reporters chose to create pendants with designs of tiny flowers; all required many hours of meticulous work. 'Micro-mosaic is all about patience,' Luk said.
Cutting glass stringers (thin rods of glass) into equal 3mm x 3mm squares needs careful co-ordination between the brain, eyes and hands. The muscles of the fingers had to 'feel' the appropriate length required. Then the reporters used a file to mark the rods and used forceps to break the glass in two.