The V A Sourcebook Of Pattern And Ornament

The V&A Sourcebook of Pattern & Ornament

A richly illustrated sourcebook of two-dimensional pattern and three-dimensional ornamentation, for designers everywhere and anyone interested in visual culture. This richly illustrated, easy-to-navigate sourcebook of surface pattern and three-dimensional ornamentation presents more than one thousand historic and contemporary examples from around the world, each one succinctly identified and explained. Arranged thematically, it is unique among pattern books, as it includes examples not only of surface pattern but also three-dimensional ornamentation and embellishment, from Japanese kimono and William Morris fabrics to Chinese porcelain and contemporary furniture. Creatives working today are as fascinated and inspired by pattern and ornament as they have always been and this expertly compiled selection will appeal to designers, artists, and illustrators from all disciplines as well as anyone interested in visual and material culture.

The Topkapi Scroll

Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.

The Grammar of Ornament