Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Some tanning and marking due to age. Ex libaray so some stamps in front. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> We were inspired to the study which produced this book by the art of Islam. As Western designs we had learnt to regard pattern as superficial decoration of form and form as dictated by function. But here was an art and architecture concerned with illusion as much as function emblazoned with dynamic interlacings of pattern and script. Yet it was apparent that this richness of invention was based on order and represented a blend of the organic and geometric: a synthesis of objective and subjective understanding of nature. In order to deepen our experience and understanding of Islamic art we set out to discover the methods (and in the process the motivations) of the original designers. In reworking this material we began to understand the nature and the role of a visual language. The reader can follow our processes and their implications in the following chapters. Our first reading of the concepts embodied in Islamic pattern was confirmed by what we later learned of Islamic culture touched on in Chapter 4. The ability to perceive pattern and make connections to see parts in relation to the whole is vital to us in the West where a culture based on dichotomy (art-science material-spiritual etc) has been led by a rapidly developing technology towards excessive analysis at the expense of synthesis.