Line, pattern and surface

This lesson asks you to show that you understand the elements and principles of design and can name them correctly, and to understand techniques artists use for specific effects. The museum offers three examples of pattern and surface from Islamic art; your own terms for design and your own work come from your class. ¹

Look at each pattern and name what you see with the design terms you know: line, shape, repetition, balance and others. Say which one makes the strongest effect.

Ask whether the effect comes from adding something to a surface or from taking something away. Describe the steps the record names and what each step leaves behind.

Yeomans dates the Aqmar Mosque to 1125 and counts its facade on al-Mu'izz street an architectural masterpiece showing Fatimid stone carving at its best. ² The facade is divided vertically by three keel-arched niches; the central one, taller and deeper in a projecting portal, has a fluted hood whose ribs rise and radiate like a sunrise around a central medallion. ^{2 3} The medallion is a set of concentric rings alternating calligraphy and scrollwork: at its centre the name of Ali repeated in a drilled Kufic lattice, then a ring repeating the name of Muhammad, then a broad foliate scroll. ³

Yeomans says that the right-hand flank of the facade, long hidden by neighbouring buildings, has been reconstructed and its original symmetry restored. ² Al-Maqrizi, in the museum's record, gives the mosque's site at the end of the market of the candle-makers and reports that Amir Yalbugha al-Salimi told him he had read words in the lines inscribed on the threshold of the gate. ^{4 5} Yeomans thinks the domes of the prayer hall come from Yalbugha al-Salimi's restoration of 1397. ^{3 6}

Part of the facade has been rebuilt. Can the facade still serve as evidence of what Fatimid carvers did in 1125, and what is the strongest argument against your answer?

• The Aqmar Mosque: the facade, the plan and the foundation inscription.
• The keel arch: the shape of the niches and arcades at al-Aqmar.
• Arabesque: plant ornament whose leaves stay joined to their stalks.
• Girih: a short record on interlacing bands that build stars and polygons.

Read the records on girih and the arabesque. Sketch one repeat of a pattern and label its lines and shapes with design terms.