Pattern, repetition and the surface

This lesson asks you to use shapes and lines to communicate ideas, and to explain how designers use the elements and principles of design in their own and others' work. The museum links two records of Islamic art for your class to look at closely, on geometric patterns and on the arabesque; making your own art work stays with your class. ¹

Look at the expectations: they ask how the elements and principles of design carry meaning. Choose one pattern and name its shapes, then notice where it repeats, where it changes, and how it fills the space.

Eva Baer, in the Encyclopaedia of Islam article on ornament, follows floral designs as they move between surfaces. After the Mongol invasions, she writes, Central Asian motifs such as lotus blossoms, peonies and composite flowers enriched the vegetal repertoire from the second half of the thirteenth century, and Chinese-inspired floral motifs appeared first on ceramics before passing to metal, wood, glass, textiles and manuscript illumination. By the second half of the fourteenth century, she says, intricate floral patterns were being turned into flat coloured faience mosaics in Persian and Central Asian architecture. ²

The arabesque can be pictured as one pattern with one beginning, but the Encyclopaedia of Islam describes it in steps. It says the arabesque has its prototype in certain acanthus, vine-leaf and cornucopia forms of late antiquity, is not yet completely developed in the Umayyad period, acquires its typical shape in the ninth century under the Abbasids and in Islamic Spain, and appears fully developed in the eleventh century under the Seljuks, Fatimids and Moors. ³

Floral designs appear first on ceramics, and later intricate floral patterns are turned into flat coloured tile mosaics in architecture. What would a maker have to think about differently when making a mosaic from cut pieces than when decorating a ceramic, and why?

• Arabesque: the definition, the stages of its development and the surfaces it appears on.
• Islamic geometric patterns: a short record about stars, polygons and grids on architectural surfaces.

Read Islamic geometric patterns and Arabesque. Draw a small design of your own that repeats one shape across a surface, and write two sentences explaining what the repetition says.