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 explore and experiment with materials, tools and techniques and to use them to make art works. The museum shows what Islamic artists used: mineral pigments and gold, the calligrapher's pen and ink, and inlaid metal. Your own experiments, and any newer technologies, come from your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- A3.1 explore and experiment with a variety of media/materials and traditional and/or emerging technologies, tools, and techniques, and apply them to produce art works […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does each material let the artist do?
For each record, list the materials and tools it names and what they were used for. Then say what you would test first if you had the same materials in your own studio.
What is traditional, and what is new?
The records describe traditional ways of working. Compare one of them with a tool or material you use today, and say what changed and what stayed the same.
Go deeper
The calligrapher's tools are few. The record says the hand is written with a reed pen and black soot ink 2. UNESCO lists the traditional tools as a pen of reed or bamboo, ink of honey, soot and saffron, and handmade paper treated with starch, egg white and alum 3. In the seventh century AH Yaqut al-Musta'simi (d. 698 AH) fixed the six principal hands 2. The entry says his great change was to cut the reed pen at a slant where it had been cut straight, which gave the hand a new lightness 2.
How do we know?
Two sources give the tools here. One is an encyclopaedia entry in Turkish, which names a reed pen and black soot ink 2. The other is UNESCO, which placed Arabic calligraphy on its Representative List in 2021 on the nomination of sixteen States Parties 3. UNESCO adds honey and saffron to the ink and names the treatment of the paper 3. The record reports both descriptions side by side and does not choose between them.
Think about it
UNESCO names writing with markers and paint, and spray-paint lettering on walls, among the contemporary forms of the practice 3. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: do a marker and a can of spray paint belong to the same art as a reed pen and soot ink?
Into the museum
- Calligrapher (khattat): the reed pen, the ink, the paper and the measure of the dot.
- Pigments and gold in Persian painting: the mineral colours, their binders and the making of gold leaf.
- Inlaid metalwork: the metals of the vessels and the centres where the technique spread.
Try this
Read the records on pigments and gold in Persian painting and inlaid metalwork. Choose one material or tool and write three sentences on how it was prepared or used, then mark the sentence that comes from the record.
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 Pigments and gold in Persian painting have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Stone, egg-white and deerskin. Norah Titley describes the pigments of Persian painting as mostly mineral: the mineral was ground to a soft powder on a hard stone, sifted, washed and mixed with egg-white, glue or gum arabic. Blue came from lapis lazuli, and copper green, made with vinegar, makes the paper brittle. Gold leaf was made by pounding gold between layers of deerskin. What would your own materials do to the page?
In your own words: what does Calligrapher (khattat) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A reed pen and soot ink. The TDV entry on calligraphy says the hand is written with a reed pen and black soot ink. It gives a rough measure of the nib: about 1 mm for naskh and about 2 to 2.5 mm for thuluth. Gold is applied as gold ink, or as gold leaf fixed with an adhesive made from seed oil and then burnished with a stone called zermuhre. How does the tool set the size of the letter?
I can now