The Ornaments of the Lodge are the Mosaic Pavement, the Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star. If you have visited a lodge, you have seen the checkered pavement and the blazing star.
“The Mosaic Pavement is a representation of the ground-floor of King Solomon’s Temple; and the Indented Tessel, of that beautiful tessellated border or skiing which surrounded it. The Mosaic Pavement is emblematical of human life checked with good and evil; the beautiful border with surrounds it is emblematical of those manifold blessings and comforts which surround us, and which we hope to obtain by a faithful reliance on Divine Providence, which is hieroglyphically represented by the Blazing Star in the center.” Monitor of the Lodge, Grand Lodge of Texas, 1982.
“The checkered pavement of King Solomon’s Temple . . . ”
The following is from Mackey’s Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, 1929:
Mosaic work consists properly of many little stones of different colors united together in patterns to imitate a painting. It was much practiced among the Romans, who called it museum, whence the Italians get their musaico, the French their mosaique, and we our mosaics. The idea that the work is derived from the fact that Moses used a pavement of colored stones in the tabernacle has been long since exploded by etymologists (an etymologist studies the history of words)..
The Masonic tradition is that the floor of the Temple of Solomon was decorated with a mosaic pavement of black and white stones. There is no historical evidence to substantiate this statement. Samuel Lee, however, in his diagram of the Temple, represents not only the floors of the building, but of all the outer courts, as covered with such a pavement.
The Masonic idea was perhaps first suggested by this passage in the Gospel of Saint John xix, 13, “When Pilate, therefore, heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment-seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.” The word here translated Pavement is in the original Lithostroton, the very word used by Pliny to denote a mosaic pavement.
The Greek word, as well as its Latin equivalent is used to denote a pavement formed of ornamental stones of various colors, precisely what is meant by a Mosaic Pavement. There was, therefore, a part of the Temple which was decorated with a mosaic pavement. The Talmud informs us that there was such a pavement in the Conclave where the Grand Sanhedrin held its sessions.
By a little torsion of historical accuracy, the Freemasons have asserted that the ground floor of the Temple was a mosaic pavement, and hence as the Lodge is a representation of the Temple, that the floor of the Lodge should also be of the same pattern. The mosaic pavement is an old symbol of the Order.
It is met with in the earliest Rituals of the eighteenth century. It is classed among the ornaments of the Lodge in combination with the indented tassel and the blazing star. Its parti-colored stones of black and white have been readily and appropriately interpreted as symbols of the evil and good of human life.
TESSELATED BORDER
The Tesselated Border is the edge which surrounds the checked pavement. It is the border of the checkered pavement. The following comments are rather boorish and come from writings of the distant past. It’s meaning is best said in the Monitor of the Lodge – “the beautiful border which surrounds it is emblematical of those manifold blessings and comfort which surround us, and which we hope to obtain by a faithful reliance on Divine Providence, which is hieroglyphically represented by the Blazing Star in the Center.
Tesselated come from the Latin “tessela”, a little square stone. Checkered, formed in little squares of Mosaic work. Applied in Masonry to the Mosaic pavement of the Temple and to the border which surrounds the tracing board, probably incorrectly, in the latter instance.
Browne says in his Master Key, which is supposed to present the general form of the Prestonian lectures, that the ornaments of a Lodge are the Mosaic Pavement, the Blazing Star, and the Tesselated Border; and he defines the Tessellated Border to be “the skirt-work round the Lodge”.
Webb, in his lectures, teaches that the ornaments of a Lodge are the Mosaic pavement, the indented tessel, and the blazing star; and he defines the indented tessel to be that “beautifully tessellated border or skirting which surrounded the ground-floor of King Solomon’s Temple.”
The French call it “la houpe dentelee,” which is literally the “indented tessel”; and they describe it as “a cord forming true-lovers’ knots, which surrounds the tracing-board.”
The Germans call it “die Schnur von starken Faden,” or the “cord of strong threads”, and define it as a border surrounding the tracing-board of an Entered Apprentice, consisting of a cord tied in lovers’ knots, with two tassels attached to the ends.
The idea prevalent in America, and derived from a misapprehension of the plate in the Monitor of Cross, that the tessellated border was a decorated part of the Mosaic pavement, and made like it of little square stones, does not seem to be supported by these definitions. They all indicate that the “tessellated border” was a cord.