“I don’t grow up,” artist M. C. Escher once said. “In me is the small child of my early days.”

Artist Sara Baldwin of New Ravenna Mosaics knows all about that – and as much about Escher.

“If you’re interested in geometry and art, one of the rites of passage is to peruse all the M. C. Escher  drawings you can,” she says. “So I was exposed to them at a young age, and it’s nice to be channeling some of him in these patterns.”

She’s talking about Illusions, her new collection of stone, shell and glass mosaics for floors, walls and backsplashes.

The cleverly designed optical patterns are available in organic tones that Baldwin says are inspired by land and sea. Artisans on the Eastern Shore of Virginia cut and assemble the mosaics by hand.

Like Escher’s work, it’s all designed to create the illusion of depth in a flat surface, but in a different kind of medium.

“There’s a cream onyx that’s wonderful to use – it has a translucency so you can see into the stone as well as the surface,” she says. “And the shell – it’s technically mother of pearl – has a reflective quality that does the same thing as the onyx. It makes the design seem more dimensional.”

It’s a collection aimed at architects and designers who appreciate classical geometry but seek a fresh, updated, 21st-century approach.

“It’s got a transitional point of view – people want patterns like that and we’re responding,” she says. “We took something old and made it new, after we started seeing some of that in Paris last year at Maison & Objet.”

Each mosaic in the collection is a customized creation, sized to fit its installation. The mosaics can be installed on both vertical and horizontal surfaces, indoors and out.

And each reflects Baldwin’s personal style, one that draws on early influences.

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