Illumination
Sema Onat Ağustos 21st, 2009
1- Turkish Art of Illumination
The word “tezhib” comes from the Arabic root “zeheb” which means “gold”. We can describe the Islamic art of illumination as the art of decorating books and calligraphic boards by using gold. Moreover this art of decorating with colors and gold is also applied on wood and leather. All the paints that were used in book making were natural paints in the old days like madder and paints in powder form. Today we use water, oil and acrylic colors that don’t distort the paper. Illuminators have used gold and navy blue together for many years and thus created a very smooth effect in the eye of the beholder. Aside from these colors, turquoise and the other tones of blue, red, green, and black have also been used extensively in the Islamic art -illumination-. Flowers were and are usually painted in light colors. Pale yellows, pink tones and light blues are the best colors from flowers. We can observe both harmonizing and opposing colors in the works. The motifs which have been most often employed in illumination are “rumi”, consisting of stylized wings and beaks; geometric forms like triangle, hexagon, octagon;”munhani”, serried curves popular with the “Seljuks”; “hatai”, which are stylized floral motifs; clouds, a swirled effect of Chinese origin and as an auxiliary motif the “tig”.We can classify these motifs in six main groups and these are; animal motifs, plant patterns, the cloud motif, geometrical motifs and symbols, the chain motif or fretworks, mixed motifs. The motifs used in illumination are sometimes used alone but they can also come together in a composition which has a defined form. These forms make up closed spaces and they have given shapes. These forms are; the rosettes, the sun motif, the corner and supports, the crests and the borders.
Two techniques of composition are free compositions and symmetrical compositions. Free composition comes into existence by the motifs which start at a given point and continue on spiral lines. It doesn’t obey strict rules. Symmetrical composition comes into existence by straight or oblique lines that come together due to given rules. The lines which make up the composition can be increase by 2, 4, 8 or more. Symmetric compositions have to stick to the rules and they obey the given scheme.
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