1960s Gravel Mosaic Wall Art Picturesque.

It was an awesome time for artistic expression during the 1960s, there were many great art kits, and gravel and stone art manufacturers made wonderful craft sets of gravel and pebble mosaic art in many beautiful and colorful styles. It was a great being a youth in the late 1950s and 1960s and was a wonderful time to grow up and enjoy all the fun arts and crafts of that era. One of the crafts I remember most was the mosaic stone and gravel artwork you could make from kits that were sold at department stores and art stores during that era. The remarkable thing about this wonderful type of craft do it yourself art is you could make everything from exotic pebble birds, poodles, bull fighters, Chinese junks, Asian mountains waterfalls, to Greek drama mask.

This mosaic artistic rush was in the mid-century modern art era, which was from 1945 to around 1969, this movement also included the Eames movement, and the modern Danish movement. The stone and gravel artwork of the Picturesque Company and other companies that made mosaic artwork for consumers of this time would fall under the modern Danish art movement, and it was an extension of the early Modernism movement. Andy Warhol once said in the early 1960s “that an artist is somebody who produces things that people do not need to have.” This could have been been true, but art and craft projects during the 1950s and 1960s era brought family together around the kitchen table making beautiful art projects such as these homemade modern mosaic creations from these well-made and beautifully designed kits.

The Picturesque Kit design process begins when a company photographer found an interesting subject matter or object of beauty in the Picturesque factory studio, next and artist would sketch a design on the mounting surface that would later be numbered by color and matted out for production. The artiistic and graphic design aspects of the picturesque mosaics would be a time consuming process with the selection of various combinations of colors of stones and grave and shapes to achieve the desired effect for the finished project. This was mass artwork in the mid-20th Century in the United States which was age of cultural changes that brought about many changes in social and religious thinking, political and moral views, and in the nature of the world economic structure in general. This was true in the art world as well as the American home of the 1960s. The American middle-class grew, more numerically and flourished and began buying news and different things, among other things, very trendy, classic and modern, and it was a new age of art that was being mass produced for the new mobile and savvy middle class.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s gravel art made from crushed stone were made into amazing mosaic with great artist inspired pictures and themes for homes and office walls. These vintage crushed rock or gravel art pieces or mosaics are now very popular to collect and show and in the ones made from kits you can see the love and care that went into each panel. Today some collectors call art from this remarkable era modern, Danish, retro, and even kitschy, most call it retro or very modern, other just love it as an example of the self-expression of the 1960s, and many folks want to collect it and have it in their homes because of it artistic beauty and handmade workmanship. The mosaic gravel art pieces shown in this hub are an example of this modern Danish movement that flourished in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These mosaics were made from kits which came complete with gravel, glass, sand, and braids and colorful string for the border edges between the bright and glassy colors, glue was included and the design already printed on a canvas’s board ready for the family to start to create a masterpiece together. They can give a home or office that "Don Draper - Mad Men" look for a wonderful 1960s retro theme. There is braiding and tiny barrel beads in many of these timeless pieces. Once on the wall these mosaic pictures have a magical effect on one’s emotion and mood. In many ways this was much like the remarkable and trendy paint by number kits that were also sold at this time period. These gravel mosaic art kits came in a very wide variety of designs and price range for the tastes, and pocket book of the consumer.

With the imported mosaic tiles, and the beautiful beads, stunning braids made of the finest materials, and the most colorful stones all you would need to add would be some sparking colored glass to combine to create a most distinctive wall panel. All the above and much more are included in a Picturesque Mosaic Kit. Plus the all ready numbered materials, and the well made panels makes it so very easy to do a stunning eye-catching work of art on your very first try. No wonder so many of these family treasures are past on from generation to generation and are still loved and sought after today.

Even though modern Danish artwork was used mainly on architecture and furniture of this era, there was great design in interior wall design and products design in this post-World War Two era. Much wall art panel artwork was done in gravel and stone or tiles. The best-known influences of this era’s art include designers and artist such as Charles & Ray Eames; Stephen B. Holloway, Wes Wilson, and Bob Carr, they also had a great influence in the modern Danish art development of the Picturesque mosaic stone and gravel art; this needs to be understood in relationship to two other aesthetic ideals of the modern art era which were the beautiful functional realism of that time, and the sublime need for order. The movement also had great artistic effect on the California builders Cliff May and Joseph Eichler, and even the design works of David Hicks, Dorothy Draper, Cliff May, and Frank Lloyd Wright who used gravel of different shades and colors to highlight his Danish modern buildings. Because of his influence many intricate pieces were made of gravel in a mosaic pieces and rope cord type design during this period. This kind of art today is enlightening, aesthetic, kitschy, rational, and a beautiful example of mid-century modernist art and today they are very collectable. Stone and pebble mosaic from the 1950s and 1960s in the strict sense of the word was an art form in transition. These stone mosaics were popular mainly because of their beauty and the efficient production methods of modern mosaic companies of that time.

In the 1960s everyone had to have some new age art for their new home in the fast growing new age Danish modern suburbs of America, and there were de it yourself mosaic artist kits, and manufacturers ready to provide the mass public "do it yourself" mosaic art kits to this new and growing middle class in the United States of the 1960s. These folks loved making these mosaics; they became family projects and many people to great pride in their self-made mosaic artwork that they made themselves.

In the early 1960s beautiful brochures came with each Picturesque kit, they were like photo catalogs of the many different types of stone and gravel mosaics the company was making that year, and the brochures would shows beautiful color pictures of about two dozen or so of the kits that they were offering that year. Picturesque kits were made up until around 1973. At that time, another company purchased the company, and they were sold as Open Door Mosaic kits and the Open Door Mosaics Company went out of business in 1978.