Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach [Paperback]

Keith Critchlow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1984

Islamic art has long been misunderstood in the West as no more than decoration. This study explains how the geometrical patterns of Islamic art reveal intrinsic cosmological laws. The primary function of the patterns is to lead the mind from the literal world towards the underlying reality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A masterly exposition of Islamic pattern and the underlying cosmological principles."
(

Art Review

) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Keith Critchlow is Director of Research and Director of Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture. An internationally known lecturer on Islamic art, he is the author of Pythagorean Geometry. He lives in England.  --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; First Edition edition (January 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500270716
• ISBN-13: 978-0500270714
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #875,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More than just a collection of cute patterns, February 11, 2001

By 

Martyn Richard Jones "Martyn Richard Jones" (Cordoba, Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach (Paperback)

This book is a must for artists, mathematicians, philosophers and anyone else interested in the foundations and rationale of Islamic art.

This book provides a comprehensive insight into Islamic Patterns in a clear and concise way. I have used this book on a number of occasions when I have needed inspiration for drawings, paintings and even for works of management strategy - curiously enough. It has a wonderful way of both focusing and relaxing the mind that seems to encourage channeled creativity.

regards,

[e-mail]

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable Prose, Helpful Drawings, March 23, 2007

By 

Eliyahu (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach (Paperback)

The book is well-nigh unreadable. Page after page of impenetrable prose in dense, closely spaced paragraphs, describing complex geometric figures. It is also unsourced: one cannot determine the basis for the author's cosmological, religious and geometric speculations. However, the drawings -- and there are many -- are worth the price. Very helpful to the artist or designer who wishes to understand and incorporate Islamic patterns.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the complex designs of Islamic art and architecture deciphered, June 30, 2008

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach (Paperback)

El-Said writes about the designs seen in a lot of Islamic art and architecture with a scientific precision. What he does is isolate the fundamental, simplest forms--the building blocks--of the Islamic art, and explain and demonstrate how artists and artisans built on these (as one might build on the basic pieces of an erector set) and manipulate these by turning them this way and that to create the incredibly complex geometric patterns. Sometimes as filigree, sometimes as a part of a structure such as a dome or panel, and sometimes a structural element, such patterns are a prime feature by which Islamic art is recognized. El-Said died in 1988 at the age of 50, before he could put the final touches on his outstanding study of the Islamic geometric designs. The two editors are experts in Islamic art and architecture who have compiled and organized El-Said's work for this book. El-Said's previous book Geometric Concepts on Islamic Art published in 1976 was a source of guidance for this book.

The geometric designs are an ancient art who beginnings El-Said, among others, has traced to Egyptian Pharaonic dynasties and Mesopotamian city-states of the third millennium B.C. The precision comes not from astronomical phenomena or scientific instruments, but from "elaborate rules of mensuration" involving signifying numbers, multiplication, division, geometrical forms, and other elements. Operations within these and combinations of them could grow very complex; but they could always be broken down into elementary factors and basic functions. The ancient Islamic architects and artists were both inspired and bound by the systems of mensuration. The palaces, temples, monuments, and other buildings they made were paragons for following generations. Thus while there is an almost infinite variation in the designs because the rules of the classical mensuration were so elaborate, the reliance on the elementary geometric forms gives a superficial resemblance to all the designs. The uniqueness of an Islamic design is in its details; not in any experimental, sensational, or idiosyncratic composition or effects as in Western modernist art for example.

Although the principles of the geometric design have remained basically the same for centuries, there have been only a handful of works explaining and discussing these principles in an analytic and demonstrative way such as El-Said does. El-Said's book is outstanding for its lucidity and pithiness. The large portion of many pages are illustrations of the principles of geometric design by diagrams of how designs are formed from the fundamental forms and mathematical functions. These diagrams look something like the diagrams of chemical compounds seen in chemistry textbooks or pictures of snowflakes. This combination of lucid text and instructive visual matter make this an outstanding book for learning about the geometric design. What one learns applies to Islamic architecture and art throughout history and in different geographical areas.