Summary
I have conserved floor and wall mosaics for 14 years, mostly late antique pavements along the Adriatic coast. My work covers documentation, lifting, cleaning, and reinstallation; the largest single pavement I have treated measured 62 square meters. I count tesserae in my sleep, which turns out to be useful on grant reports.
Experience
Senior Conservator
2019–presentStudio Tessera Restauri · Ravenna
- Directed conservation of a 5th-century baptistery floor: 62 m² of opus tessellatum stabilized and re-bedded on lime mortar over 26 months.
- Built the studio's photogrammetric recording workflow; per-panel documentation time fell from 6 hours to 90 minutes.
- Supervise a team of 4 conservators and train 2 interns per season in tessera-level cleaning and gap reintegration.
Conservator
2014–2019Cooperativa Litorale Adriatico · Aquileia field office
- Lifted and relocated 11 mosaic panels from a threatened villa site ahead of a flood-defense project, with zero tessera loss recorded at handover.
- Ran salt-damage monitoring on 3 open-air pavements; quarterly readings over 4 years informed the site's new drainage plan.
- Wrote condition reports for 27 excavated surfaces, adopted as the cooperative's reporting template in 2018.
Assistant Conservator
2011–2014Fondazione Pavimenti Antichi · Ravenna
- Cleaned and consolidated roughly 40 m² of wall mosaic per year under senior supervision, mainly gold-glass and stone tesserae.
- Catalogued 3,200 loose tesserae from storage into a searchable inventory with provenance notes.
Education
MA, Conservation of Archaeological Materials
Thesis on lime-based bedding mortars for re-laid pavements, tested across 18 mortar mixes.
BA, Cultural Heritage Studies
Final project: survey and condition mapping of a 210 m² Roman bath floor.
Skills & Certifications
Skills
- Mosaic lifting & re-laying
- Lime mortar formulation
- Photogrammetry
- Salt & moisture monitoring
- Condition mapping (GIS)
- Grant & report writing
- Italian, English, Latin (reading)
Certifications & Papers
- Certified restorer, national heritage register, category: stone and mosaic surfaces (2016).
- Co-author of 5 conference papers on bedding mortars and in-situ desalination, 2015–2024.