For my first real post, I thought I’d talk about a project I’m working on for a nonwestern art history class. This one has a studio component as part of the final research paper. For the research paper, we had to pick a nonwestern country/culture and one art medium, and discuss that. I have always loved Islamic art, with its many intricate patterns and designs. I wrote a paper a couple terms ago about a Pictish sarcophagus and compared/contrasted it to the façade of an early Islamic palace called Mshatta from about the same time (~700-ish C.E.). The façade had an intricate vegetal pattern with fantastical animals all over it. It was really cool. Although a lot of what we think of in regards to Islamic art is actually architecture, or at least building related (mosaics inside mosques and so on), but they also have a rich tradition of creating beautiful books. This is in line with illuminated manuscripts from Europe like the Book of Kells. Here’s a page from the book of Kells (found here):
So I decided to write my paper on Islamic manuscript illumination—I mean, books are one of my favorite things in the world, so this makes a ton of sense. And because I’m supposed to go to Egypt in December (me now = excited + scared), I decided to focus on Egypt.
There are actually two different types of book decoration: one is illustration, where the narrative is illustrated with relevant pictures of events and people in the story, and two is ornamentation, where it’s just decorated in a way that isn’t necessarily related to the text. The first is what we generally think of when we think of illustrated books, like picture books or other children’s books. The pictures and text are interwoven. But ornamentation is really all about making it look generically pretty—decorating it.
After talking to the instructor and doing some research, I learned that Egypt and North Africa mostly stuck with ornamentation, whereas most illustration came out of Central Asia (mostly Iran). There were some instances of illustration in Egypt and Africa, but there just wasn’t enough material on it to write a paper (in my view—I always want lots of sources). So I decided to stick with Egypt, and just focus on ornamentation of the Qur’an done there.
The Qur’an as a book is rather interesting. Although it’s obviously analogous to the Bible in Christianity, from what I’ve read it’s even more elevated, as it’s considered the literal word of God and apparently Muslims reading it (and reading from it) are supposed to feel very spiritually connected to God. I know this sort of sounds like the Bible, but I think it’s really much more extreme. So illuminating the Qur’an was considered very important work (as was the calligraphy part, as well). Here is an example from a Turkish Qur’an done in the 19th century (found here):
Note the three rectangular panels: a big one in the middle and two smaller ones, one above and one below. This is a common layout (the outer border is usually smaller in the ones I’ve seen from Egypt).
So for my studio project, I decided to illuminate my own book, Finding Frances. I took some text from a highly-charged scene (a car chase) and designed it. Here’s what it looks like at this point:
It’s not done, and I didn’t draw everything I’m going to do. The central text blocks have a curved line around each block that will remain as-is inside, but thin diagonal lines (bottom-left to top-right) will be drawing within the box outside the text blobs (I might do the right page top-left to bottom-right—still thinking about it). The border that goes around and between the three panels will be gold foil except for a think line of silver foil down the middle. The top and bottom panels also have the text set against the page, but around that I will draw thin vertical lines within the inner border, which will be silver. There’s a vegetal pattern outside it that will be in a few colors (I might do gold for the leaves, but the circles will be colors) with a blue background. For the panels on the right page, it’s hard to see—but the top image is the front of a pickup truck and the bottom is the back. The trim and bumper will be in silver and the painted parts in red. A similar vegetal pattern to the panels on the left will be used, again with a blue background. The outside border isn’t done, but the vines are where they will be, except for the upper right of the right page, which I need to fix. One of the vines will be green and the other white, on a blue background. I will be adding small flowers on the vines and I’ve also decided to do something a little silly—I’m going to add tiny cat heads that at first glance will just look like flowers. I figure this makes it really mine, given how much I love cats, and it’s also a nod to ancient Egypt. Finally, the page number medallions will be done in a gold border. I haven’t yet figured out what I’ll do with the inside, but there will also be lines extending above and below the medallions with little accents. I may also do little decorative marks around the main outside border based on some I’ve seen in other manuscripts.
I’m actually kind of excited to work on this. I’m hoping it turns out as cool as it is in my head.
The follow-up to this post is available here.