Islamic interlace patterns

Interlacing patterns dominate Islamic ornament. They can be broadly divided into arabesque, using curving plant-based elements, and girih using mostly geometrical forms with straight lines or regular curves. Both of these forms of Islamic art developed from the rich interlacing patterns of the Byzantine Empire, and Coptic art.

Islamic art makes use of two broad categories of interlacing patterns, namely arabesque, using curving plant-based elements, and girih using mostly geometrical forms. Eva Baer, in her book Islamic Ornament (1998), describes the art:

....the intricate interlacings common in later medieval Islamic art, are already prefigured in Umayyad architecture revetments: in floor mosaics, window grilles, stone and stucco carvings and wall paintings(Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qusayr'Amra, Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi etc.), and in the decoration of a whole group of early east Iranian, eighth- to tenth-century metal objects.

One of the first Western studies of the subject was E. H. Hankin's "The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art", published in Memoirs of the Archaeological Societry of India in 1925. In this essay, Hankin takes the view that the artists who created these designs used a method based on the use of the compass and the straight edge. This view is supported by the majority of contemporary authorities on the subject, such as Keith Critchlow in his book, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach. This explains how ornamented objects as varied in size as a book or a mosque, were treated by artists using the same geometric methods adapted to the size and nature of the object being ornamented.

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