Tessa Hunkin's Hackney Mosaic Project

Tessa Hunkin trained and worked as an architect until 1989 when she joined Emma Biggs at the recently founded Mosaic Workshop in Holloway, North London. Mosaic offered a way of developing a lifelong interest in colour and decoration while still working in an architectural context. In 2000 Tessa worked on the first of a series of commissions to fabricate mosaics for Westminster Cathedral. As well as working on commissions Tessa has collaborated on books about mosaics and her work appeared in various exhibitions. In 2008 she began teaching at Workshop and Company, an organisation in Westminster that helped people recovering from mental health problems, and she also helped the service users to participate in a series of mosaic commissions including the entrance floor at the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen. Tessa Hunkin founded Hackney Mosaic Project in 2012 and over the past decade she has presided over a renaissance in the art of mosaic making, leading a team comprising of hundreds of people who have created dozens of beautiful mosaics and installed them across East London