Mosaics have always been solutions to problems. With micromosaics it's no different. Traditional mosaics were invented to solve the problem of flooring in ancient times. They only had pounded earth floors. To keep them from falling apart during rainy days and with high traffic (horses and wagons) they started using mosaic as a means to have more durable pavements both indoors and out. These floors were generally in natural materials like stone and marble.
Later in the Byzantine era, mosaics were used as forms of communication in public spaces like churches with religious and political stories. These brighter mosaics were often made with a special glass called smalti.

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Micromosaics are an evolution of traditional mosaics, in fact they share a lot of the same elements and once again they were put into use to solve a problem: the paintings in the Vatican were disintegrating from humidity.

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The Vatican employed mosaic artists to decorate St. Peter's basilica so it was logical they would ask the mosaic artists to create a more durable version of these paintings.

​ The problem being that the artists couldn't reproduce the fine details and brush strokes of the paintings with the traditional materials and tools.

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The Vatican mosaic artists therefore came up with a new method of working. They started melting down Venetian glass to pull it into filaments. Each filament has a different (cross section) shape to imitate elements, details and brush strokes of the original painting.

During the 1800s the artists working for the Vatican started producing small objects from their homes for the tourist trade on the Grand Tour. This meant that jewelry and other smaller items were exported during this time. It also meant that the technique had leaked out of the Vatican.  

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The Vatican continued the tradition for centuries in fact it only spread to two other countries, Russia and France as a political exchange but failed to continue in France.

The Vatican still holds a lot of secrets around this technique. One of the main ones being the production of colours which is still very tricky today.