Patterns that cover surfaces

This lesson asks you to explain how elements and principles of design are used to communicate meaning, and to be aware of works of art and artistic traditions from diverse communities, times and places. The museum offers Islamic geometric patterns and the arabesque, as its records describe them. The records do not analyse colour or symmetry; your class can examine that in the works themselves. ¹

The expectations ask how design is used to communicate meaning. Look at a repeating pattern and follow one shape in it: where does it begin, where does it repeat, and what fills the space around it?

Walk down a lane in Fez with a writer from long ago. A house is going up, and you can tell by the gravel on the ground: it is chips of coloured glazed terracotta, the leftovers of zellij. In the courtyard the steel hammers of the tile-setters ring as they trim their pieces. Rexford Newcomb copies this picture from Jean Gallotti. ² Zellij is the ceramic mosaic used to cover floors and walls in Morocco. ²

The tile-setters trim each piece with a hammer before they lay it in the pattern. Why would a piece have to be trimmed before it can go in its place, and how do you know?

• Zellij: glazed pieces cut and laid in geometric patterns.
• The Decorative Tiles of North Africa: the monograph that holds the picture of the lanes of Fez.
• Islamic geometric patterns: a short record about stars, polygons and grids.

Read about Islamic geometric patterns and then about the arabesque. Draw one shape from a pattern and repeat it until it covers a sheet, then describe what the repeating did to the surface.