Customer Reviews

Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach

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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,

martyn_jones@iniciativas.com

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.

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.

this book is really a wonderful tool for us to start recongnizing and understanding the fabric of life, and the energy fields that are encoded in Islamic art.

In fact the patterns are present also in other cultures so this book is about the archetypes of creation, the sacred geometries that remind us that the whole inhabits the parts - the undeniable spark that connects all life together. Neatly illustrates the flower of life matrix and its manifestations

For the maths lovers, also a lot on magic squares.

Very well explained in text and wonderfully illustrated. I have mine in an old edition and keep buying as a gift for friends - it's a jewel, Keith Critchlow is a name I respect.

I am very happy with Islamic Patterns and the way it was delivered, no hassles

If you want to know the brains behind Islamic Art, this is the book. It begins with one point and then moves....