Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98971 in Books
• Published on: 1974-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Synopsis
Presents one hundred and ninety Islamic geometrical patterns and twenty-eight examples of how these are used for architectural ornamentation.

Customer Reviews

fantastic details
This book is mainly black and white (except for a few photos) but what it does that is quite amazing is that it actually shows you HOW to draw all the designs, using compasses and dividers, and also how to change the designs in different ways. It's a reprint of an old French book (over 100 years old) - the guy must have spent years working out how all these different designs, that he copied off the walls of mosques etc on his travels, could be copied exactly. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to draw this kind of thing themselves. There are many (probably 50 from memory) different designs which can all be adapted too.

Exquisitely beautiful, a fantastic resource for doing your own, but NO WORDS!
This book is a collection of a couple of hundred plates of geometric patterns. Each pattern has a section with dotted lines over the solid lines of the designs, to make understanding their construction and underlying maths easier. This makes it ideal for making your own, as I'm now doing, but this is by no means easy... There is no accompanying text to explain what you're looking at or how it was arrived at, so you have to work it ALL out for yourself. While this is great fun if you're me, it might not be if you just want the result, not the mental challenge of arriving at it.

Or you could just get it because it's gorgeous and never try and copy any. It's black and white linear forms only, but my goodness staring at these images is a trip!

Great collection but...
Not for complete beginners - get Tarek el-Bouri's book first and once you have grasped the basics from that, this is an excellent book, there'll be no problem with the minimal amount of construction lines in the examples. The only problem is with the binding which falls to bits after 6 months or so. 5 for the book as a collection of patterns, 1 for the binding. And don't forget a folder to keep the pages in when they fall out as they inevitably will.