Islamic Geometric Design - Hardcover

Broug, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500516952 ISBN 13: 9780500516959

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2013

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Author:

Eric Broug is an author, educator, and designer, specializing in Islamic geometric design for over twenty-five years, and the founder of the School of Islamic Geometric Design. He gives workshops and lectures around the world.

Review:

“A rich collection.”
- Islamic Horizons

“An exemplary and detailed practitioner account of Islamic pattern design. . . . the lush photographic images are accompanied by visualized formal analysis that gives the patterns conceptual depth. . . . Highly recommended.”
- Choice

“An extremely effective and thorough work on the geometric designs found throughout Islamic art and architecture and the process by which these designs were created. . . . Well written, well-thought-out, and extremely well-illustrated. Enthusiastically recommended.”
- Library Journal

“This visually stunning look conveys the beauty and complexity of Islamic patterns . . .”
- Saudi Aramco World

“A hybrid of coffee-table, informational, and how-to book.”
- Protoview

“Uniquely comprehensive. . . . Clearly written so that a total understanding of the material is possible for specialist and novice alike.”
- American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0500516952
• ISBN 13: 9780500516959
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256