Patterns that cover surfaces

This lesson asks you to notice art forms, styles and traditions of other cultures, and to analyse how the elements and principles of design carry meaning. The museum offers Islamic geometric patterns, the arabesque, as its records describe them. The records do not analyse colour or symmetry; your class can investigate those in the artworks themselves. ¹

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

A pattern of leaves and stalks does not stay on one kind of surface. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the arabesque is not tied to one material. It appears in architectural decoration, in painted decoration, in pottery, glass and metalwork, and above all in book illumination. It says Persian and Turkish artists understood its language, and over the centuries they competed with one another in creating ever more varieties. ² A later article adds that Islamic ornament can pass easily from one material or technique to another. ³

Imagine the same leaf pattern on a clay pot and on a wall. What could stay the same and what would the artist have to change when the surface changes, and why?

• Arabesque: the materials it appears in, from buildings to manuscripts.
• Islamic geometric patterns: a short record about stars, polygons and grids that cover buildings from al-Andalus to Central Asia.

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