Roman Mosaic Star Earrings

Beneath the streets of modern Canterbury survive the remains of an extraordinary Roman town house.

Its mosaic floors were formed from hundreds of small coloured pieces of stone and tile known as tesserae, carefully arranged into geometric borders, rosettes and repeating ornamental patterns.

These floors once formed part of the richly decorated interior of a Roman building in the city then known as Durovernum Cantiacorum.

Centuries passed above them.

Buildings changed, streets developed and the Roman town gradually disappeared beneath later Canterbury — yet fragments of its carefully constructed mosaic floors survived below ground.

Today, those remains can be seen at Canterbury Roman Museum, where the surviving pavement preserves the craftsmanship and decorative taste of Roman Britain almost two thousand years after it was first laid.

The Roman Mosaic Star Earrings reinterpret that visual language in gold.

Each pendant takes the form of an eight-pointed geometric star, centred around a layered floral motif. Fine textured detailing across the surface echoes the appearance of individual tesserae, translating the structure of an ancient mosaic into miniature wearable ornament.

The result is a pair of jewels inspired not by an imagined Roman pattern, but by the surviving decorative floors beneath one of Britain's historic cities.

A mosaic beneath Canterbury, recreated in gold.