Architectural Details and Ornaments

(Laurence Finston's Website)

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Copyright 2022, 2023 Laurence D. Finston
All Rights Reserved.

Last updated: March 13, 2022.

Table of Contents

Alhambra

"The Alhambra [...] is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain." (Wikipedia). It is famous, among other things, for its architectural details and ornaments in the Islamic style, which have inspired many artists, including M.C. Escher.

The wall decorations of the Alhambra rely primarily on periodic divisions of the plane, also known as "tilings" or "tesselations", using geometric figures and calligraphic lettering.

The 19th-century work Plans, elevations, sections, and details of the Alhambra, by Jules Goury and Owen Jones, which is in the public domain, includes many plates illustrating patterns used in the decoration of the Alhambra. It is available from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Planselevations2Gour

Goury and Jones, Plans

Plate 49 from Volume 2 of Goury and Jones, Plans.

MetaPost Programs

Goury and Jones, Plans, p. 207

This is a computer graphic created using MetaPost illustrating a portion of a pattern taken from the plate above.

I determined that for my purposes at the present time (March 2022), it wasn't necessary to color the image, so the images I created with this program subsequently (see below) are in black and white.

Plaster

Woodcut

Goury and Jones, Plans, p. 195

Contact

Laurence Finston
Göttingen, Germany
email: Laurence.Finston-*-AT-*-gmx.de
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