Big E Coliseum Mural
In 2015, Marcus Tile was brought in by the Eastern States Exposition to reconstruct the large 100-year old centerpiece mural on the exterior of the Big E Coliseum.
The original mural's tiles were handmade in Boston over 100 years ago, by a company who is no longer in business so the material had to be reproduced by a new artist to look as similar as possible to the originals. This required the difficult task of finding an artist who could shape, paint, and fire a structural stoneware tile for each part of the mural.
Once the tile was created and delivered, Ron Napolitan pieced the tiles together in position, numbering each piece and creating a "key" to follow during installation. The mosaic was then reconstructed again on the site at the Coliseum and each piece was installed one-by-one.
In all, the reconstruction project from design to install took over a year to complete and was done in time for the fair's 100th anniversary in September 2016.