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 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
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D1.3 use elements of design in art works to communicate ideas, messages, and understandings […]
- 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 repetition do to a surface?
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.
Go deeper
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
Often misunderstood
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
Think about it
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?
Into the museum
- 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.
Try this
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.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Islamic geometric patterns have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Stars, polygons and grids. The record describes Islamic geometric patterns as repeated patterns of stars, polygons and grids that cover the surfaces of Islamic architecture and art from al-Andalus to Central Asia. Which shapes can you pick out, and what does repeating them across a surface do to the way a wall or a page looks?
In your own words: what does Arabesque have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Leaves that become pattern. 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. How does a design that respects the surface differ from one that seems to grow out of it?
I can now