Habiba and I spent the day at Northlight Studio in Hebden Bridge taking part in the Islamic Geometric Design workshop led by Eric Broug. Eric is the author of a Thames & Hudson book with the same title as our workshop session, and it was an excellent introduction to the subject. Enjoyable and informative, Eric gave us an overview, and then followed up with practical sessions is which we all created several versions of Islamic designs.
Although our individual designs were exciting and sometimes slightly challenging to create, using simple tools like rulers and compasses, perhaps the most fascinating feature of the workshop was to see how the individual designs were transformed when ‘tessellated’, or placed together in tiled combinations, revealing new shapes and forms in the larger design.
One of the other people on the workshop was Maryam Golubeva, a UK based Moscow born and raised artist with Turkish ancestry. Maryam works in the medium of papercutting and has a particular passion for Islamic art. Seeing photographs of her paper cuts made me feel that this may be the way to introduce some of the design work we’re beginning to see emerge in our Different Moons project.