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Islamic Geometric Design
Combines wide-ranging research with the author’s artistic skills to reveal the techniques used to create the patterns adorning buildings in the Islamic world Islamic geometric designs are admired worldwide for their beauty and marvelous intricacy, yet they are seldom understood. In this handsomely illustrated volume, Eric Broug analyzes and explains these complex designs in their historical and physical context.
Broug shows how, over the centuries, craftsmen were able to adorn buildings with wonderful geometric patterns using the simplest of tools and without recourse to mathematical calculations. Design elements created from straight lines and circles were placed in grids and then repeated and varied to generate seemingly limitless arrays of breathtaking patterns.
Chapters are devoted to each of the main families of geometric design―fourfold, fivefold, and sixfold―and to the complex combined patterns. Readers can follow the design processes by which these patterns were created and even learn to reproduce and invent geometric patterns for themselves. Broug’s original drawings accompany photographs of mosques, madrasas, palaces, and tombs from the Islamic world, ranging from North Africa to Iran and Uzbekistan, and from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries. 800 illustrations in color and black and white
Broug shows how, over the centuries, craftsmen were able to adorn buildings with wonderful geometric patterns using the simplest of tools and without recourse to mathematical calculations. Design elements created from straight lines and circles were placed in grids and then repeated and varied to generate seemingly limitless arrays of breathtaking patterns.
Chapters are devoted to each of the main families of geometric design―fourfold, fivefold, and sixfold―and to the complex combined patterns. Readers can follow the design processes by which these patterns were created and even learn to reproduce and invent geometric patterns for themselves. Broug’s original drawings accompany photographs of mosques, madrasas, palaces, and tombs from the Islamic world, ranging from North Africa to Iran and Uzbekistan, and from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries. 800 illustrations in color and black and white
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 21, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 15, 2015
Amazing - beautiful pictures and crystal clear explanations. What a treat.
November 24, 2015
The best thing about this book are the beautiful pictures, very well selected and printed, of a wide variety of styles of Islamic Geometric Design. VERY worthwhile to a student of this topic.
The worst thing about this book is the prose. Repetitive and banal: it reads like a schoolkid's padded submission where they have stretched 2 pages of information out to fit the minimum length assignment length of 5 pages.
As usual with such bloated prose, it obscures and sours and really makes inaccessible what good information there is.
Though the ideas are so repetitive that each page functions much like a hologram of the whole-- read it and you will quickly become acquainted with the central thesis of the book, which is...
The provocative notion that the "craftsmen" who produced these works were: 1) not acquainted with whatever esoteric meaning these symbols and shapes were held to posses by the scholar-geometer class
2) purely interested in technical problems of executing attractive patterns to fill the space presented to them.
I note that this is likelier to be true of a modern Dutch draftsman (i.e. the author) than someone working in a religious society on art for sacred applications.
While a few bits of decent evidence are presented which support the general notion that craftsmen were less acquainted with esoterica (the very meaning of which is "the hidden") and more focused on technical achievement, I imagine the reality was that there was a continuum of knowledge and personal devotion among those that executed these designs.
Broug poses a lot of questions about what designs or styles were executed and why, and presents no answers. Might some of these answers lie in the areas of esoteric meaning and devotion?
Again to his credit, Broug does a good job analyzing the technical considerations and methods of execution of these designs. He is a working practitioner in this field and he knows his stuff-- the stuff required to make designs in this style for a modern secular audience, which has obviously required a lot of work with the designs, a lot of looking at historical designs, and a metaphysical belief system in accord with the present day.
Note that if your interest is purely in making these designs yourself then his earlier book may better suit your purposes, cost less, and take up less space on your bookshelf.
The worst thing about this book is the prose. Repetitive and banal: it reads like a schoolkid's padded submission where they have stretched 2 pages of information out to fit the minimum length assignment length of 5 pages.
As usual with such bloated prose, it obscures and sours and really makes inaccessible what good information there is.
Though the ideas are so repetitive that each page functions much like a hologram of the whole-- read it and you will quickly become acquainted with the central thesis of the book, which is...
The provocative notion that the "craftsmen" who produced these works were: 1) not acquainted with whatever esoteric meaning these symbols and shapes were held to posses by the scholar-geometer class
2) purely interested in technical problems of executing attractive patterns to fill the space presented to them.
I note that this is likelier to be true of a modern Dutch draftsman (i.e. the author) than someone working in a religious society on art for sacred applications.
While a few bits of decent evidence are presented which support the general notion that craftsmen were less acquainted with esoterica (the very meaning of which is "the hidden") and more focused on technical achievement, I imagine the reality was that there was a continuum of knowledge and personal devotion among those that executed these designs.
Broug poses a lot of questions about what designs or styles were executed and why, and presents no answers. Might some of these answers lie in the areas of esoteric meaning and devotion?
Again to his credit, Broug does a good job analyzing the technical considerations and methods of execution of these designs. He is a working practitioner in this field and he knows his stuff-- the stuff required to make designs in this style for a modern secular audience, which has obviously required a lot of work with the designs, a lot of looking at historical designs, and a metaphysical belief system in accord with the present day.
Note that if your interest is purely in making these designs yourself then his earlier book may better suit your purposes, cost less, and take up less space on your bookshelf.
April 7, 2018
Tác giả dùng 3 năm để viết nên tác phẩm và ông đạt được master degree từ nó. Tác phẩm chứa đựng tinh hoa của trung á. Xem mà ngẫm kĩ thuật làm đồ mĩ nghệ nước nhà.
December 14, 2014
Interesting book, this one. The author aims to describe various geometric patterns in Islamic architecture (there is more focus on architecture than on arts in general; one manuscript painting by Bihzad is described in detail and then a few Quranic pages, though) from Islamic Spain through Morocco (mostly Fez & Marrakesh), Cairo, Baghdad, to Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan, among other places. He claims the patterns have no symbolic/spiritual meaning as such, and seems honest about questions with no answers. He mentions the Penrose tiling problem, and how it is related to Islamic geometric patterns. What I liked the most were the examples of patterns that went wrong because the artist made a mistake - that lets you be a lot more mature and appreciative when viewing this kind of art. There are instructions in the appendix on how to draw many of the patterns. The book is richly illustrated with colour photos and diagrams that are usually easy to follow - 4 stars out of 5 from me, as these could be clearer.
March 1, 2015
This book is great as inspiration and instruction for those wanting to learn how to make beautiful patterns on a geometric grid with compasses and rulers. Full of beautiful, large, full color illustrations of Islamic art and architecture. The last section of the book features pattern how-to with beginner, intermediate, and advanced pattern levels. This is an amazing find!!!
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February 6, 2016700.961 B8752 2013
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews