Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to explain how the elements and principles of design are used in art works to communicate meaning or understanding. The museum offers two examples from Islamic decoration: the flat vegetal arabesque, and Moroccan zellij tilework, where colour and cutting carry the design. Package designs and modern paintings your class must bring from elsewhere. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D2.2 explain how the elements and principles of design are used in their own and others’ art work to communicate meaning or understanding […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does the surface do to a design?
Compare a pattern that respects its surface with one that seems to grow out of it. Ask how the impression changes.
Where does colour carry the idea and where does shape?
In the tile example look at what rests on differences of colour and what rests on cutting the ceramic. What would happen if one of them were missing?
Go deeper
Zellij is the ceramic mosaic used to cover floors and walls in Morocco. 2 Newcomb describes two ways of making a pattern from tile in Morocco. Some of the mosaic is made of small squares, hexagons and other regular shapes, and its pattern is carried by colour. Some is true mosaic, with the pieces cut and laid like marble or glass tesserae. 3
Think about it
In the first kind the pattern is carried by colour. If every piece were the same colour, what would happen to that pattern, and why?
Into the museum
- Zellij: Moroccan ceramic mosaic, its kinds and how it was made.
- The Decorative Tiles of North Africa: the monograph this description comes from.
- Arabesque: plant ornament whose leaves stay joined to their stalks.
Try this
Read about the arabesque and zellij. On a square sheet, draw a flat pattern of stylised leaves, then colour a regular grid in two colours, and write how each choice changes the meaning.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Arabesque have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A flat pattern that respects its surface. Richard Yeomans sees the beginning of the Islamic arabesque in a style found at Samarra, where leaves become simple shapes, lose their stems and are arranged into a flat pattern on the surface. In his view the vegetal arabesque is stylised and two-dimensional, respecting the surface, unlike closed, naturalistic Graeco-Roman ornament. Where, on a wall or a page, would you look for a pattern that respects its surface?
In your own words: what does Zellij (Maghrebi tile mosaic) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Colour and the cut in glazed tile. Newcomb describes zellij as the ceramic mosaic used in Morocco. Some is made of small squares, hexagons and other regular shapes, its pattern carried by colour. Inscriptions on panel borders are made from whole glazed tiles, usually black: the surface round the letters is cut through the glaze to the terracotta, leaving black letters on a terracotta ground. In this tilework, where does colour carry the design and where does the cut?
I can now