Patterns...Islamic

-Geometric interlacing patterns are a subcategory of Islamic pattern and ornament.

-Geometric motifs were popular with Islamic artists and designers in all parts of the world, for decorating almost every surface, whether walls or floors, pots or lamps, book covers or textiles. 

-This art expressed the logic and order inherent in the Islamic vision of the universe. 

 -The cultivation of mathematical analysis, in particular, had a harmonising effect. Driven by the religious passion for abstraction and the related doctrine of unity -- al-tawhid, the Muslim intellectuals recognized in geometry the unifying intermediary between the material and the spiritual world.

-Islamic pattern and geometry are directed towards that undifferentiated unity.

-The circle, and its centre, are the point at which all Islamic patterns begin and is an apt symbol of a religion that emphasizes one God, symbolising also, the role of Mecca, the center of Islam, toward which all Moslems face in prayer. 

-The circle has always been regarded as a symbol of eternity, without being and without end, and is not only the perfect expression of justice-equality in all directions in a finite domain--but also the most beautiful parent of all polygons, both containing and underlying them. 

-From the circle comes three fundamental figures in Islamic art, the triangle, square and hexagon. 

-The triangle by tradition is symbolic of human consciousness and the principle of harmony. The square, the symbol of physical experience and the physical world-or materiality-and the hexagon, of Heaven.

-Many of the patterns used in Islamic art look similar, even though they decorate different objects. They are are two dimensional both in form and intent and are made up of a small number of repeated geometric elements that create a complex whole by repeating a few elements