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 the right words for the elements and principles of design, and to understand some techniques artists use to get a specific effect. The museum offers three cases of pattern and surface from Islamic art: interlacing bands, plant ornament, and cut tile. The terms of your own studio come from your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C1.1 use appropriate terminology when identifying and describing the use of elements and principles of design in their own art works and the works of others […]
- C2.1 demonstrate an understanding of some techniques that artists use to achieve specific effects […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What words describe what you see?
Look at the three cases and list the words the records use for line, shape, surface and colour. Choose the three words you think a classmate would need most.
How was the effect made?
Pick one effect, such as black letters on a clay ground, and write the steps the record gives. Say which step creates the effect.
Go deeper
Newcomb describes how the Arabic and Kufic inscriptions on the borders of tile panels are made. They are made from whole glazed tiles, usually black. The inscription is laid out and the surface round the letters is cut through the glaze to the terracotta with chisels or sharp hammers, leaving black letters on a terracotta ground, a process demanding great skill. 2 3 So the letters are the glaze that is left, and the ground is the terracotta the tools have uncovered. This differs from true mosaic, in which the pieces are cut and laid like marble or glass tesserae. 2
How do we know?
Everything the museum holds on this technique comes from one monograph, written by Rexford Newcomb, professor of the history of architecture, and published in 1929 by a tile manufacturers' association in New York. 4 It leans heavily on Rivoira, Migeon, Saladin, the Marçais brothers, Bel and Gallotti, quoting them at length, and was written for American architects. 5 6 For the history, Newcomb notes that Alfred Bel cites the author of the Rawd al-Qirtas (c. 1325) on the fourteenth-century care for building with enamelled tiles, marble and carving, as the revetments of fourteenth-century madrasas, mosques and houses bear out. 7 2
Think about it
Newcomb describes black letters cut from glazed tile, and he quotes writers who came before him. Can a report on how zellij inscriptions were made rely on his monograph alone, and what is the strongest argument against your answer?
Into the museum
- Zellij: the kinds of Moroccan ceramic mosaic, how they were made and their history at Fez.
- The Decorative Tiles of North Africa: the monograph this description rests on.
- Arabesque: plant ornament whose leaves stay joined to their stalks.
- Girih: a short record on interlacing bands that build stars and polygons, common in Seljuk and Safavid architecture.
Try this
Read the records on the arabesque and zellij. Describe one pattern in six sentences, using at least four words taken from the records.
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 Girih have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Stars and polygons from bands. The record on girih says only that these are Islamic geometric strapwork patterns that build stars and polygons from interlacing bands. It adds that they were common in Safavid and Seljuk architecture and are based on girih tiles. It gives no more. Which words would you use to describe a pattern made of interlacing bands?
In your own words: what does Arabesque have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Plant ornament that respects the surface. Richard Yeomans sees the beginning of the Islamic arabesque in Samarra style B, where leaves and palmettes become abstract, lose their stems and are organised into the surface geometry of polygons and polylobes. In his view the vegetal arabesque is stylised and two-dimensional, respecting the surface, unlike closed, naturalistic Graeco-Roman ornament. Which of these words describes what you see in a pattern?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.22
- 3. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.23
- 4. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.1
- 5. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.30
- 6. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.31
- 7. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.21