2-756-619 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Middle eastern weaving, embroidery and painting, (1898). 'Fig 1: Woven carpet of the 14th century, preserved in the church at Nivelles [Belgium]. Fig 2: Embroidered Appliqué work of the 18th century. Fig 3: A portion of the richly painted ceiling of the mosque el Bordeyny [Al-Burdayni] at Cairo...The Arabian artists...created in changeful play an abundance of rich combinations of lines, called Arabesques after their inventors, the Arabs, consisting either of figures geometrically constructed or of foliage rigidly idealised. In such intertwisted scroll work, exhibiting its finest forms in ingenious rosettes and stars, the principle prevails, that each scroll and each leaf is always traceable to its root and parent stem. Brilliant colours serve more especially to disentangle the seemingly insoluble intricacy, and to diffuse a quiet harmony over the decorated surface'. Plate 23 from "The Historic Styles of Ornament" translated from the German of H. Dolmetsch. [B.T. Batford, London, 1898]