Pattern, geometry and Islamic art
Art & Design · Key Stage 2 · The School
Building from a circle
Almost every Islamic geometric pattern starts with a circle. The circle is divided evenly, into 6, 8, 10 or 12. Draw a circle. Keep the compass at the same setting. Now step it around the edge. It divides into six exactly. Join those points and the whole family of six-fold patterns opens up. There is no measuring and no guessing. It is all construction.
Tessellation
Shapes TESSELLATE when they fit together with no gaps and no overlaps. Squares, triangles and hexagons do it on their own. Most other shapes need a partner. Craftsmen in Córdoba, Cairo, Isfahan and Fez worked these systems out by hand. They did it centuries before anyone wrote the mathematics down.
Why this tradition
In much Islamic religious art, makers turned away from showing living creatures. They put their skill into geometry instead. They put it into plant forms, called ARABESQUE. And they put it into calligraphy. The result is not a limitation. It is one of the most sophisticated systems of ornament ever developed. It spread into European design through Spain and Sicily.
Draw a circle with a compass. Do not change the radius. Put the point anywhere on the edge and mark an arc. Move to that mark and repeat. Go all the way round. You get exactly six points. This always works. It is why six-fold pattern is everywhere in Islamic art. Join the points for a hexagon. Join alternate ones for two triangles. Keep your construction lines. The geometry is the design.