Notes on pattern, construction & heritage.
Short, precise pieces on Islamic geometric ornament - what the terms mean, how the constructions actually work, and how to put them on a wall. Every figure on these pages is drawn live by the same engine that powers the studio. Nothing is a stock image.
What is girih?
The strapwork geometry of Islamic star patterns - the five tiles, the knot lines, and why a 15th-century shrine anticipated quasicrystals.
What is zellige?
Morocco's hand-cut glazed tile mosaic - how it is made, the Fès palette, and the colour rules the craft has followed for seven centuries.
How the patterns are constructed
The compass-and-straightedge method, from underlying tessellation to finished strapwork - including the exact star depths the tradition favours.
Islamic tiles in interiors
A working guide for designers: repeat sizes, placement, palette restraint, and how to brief a fabricator from a pattern file.
The golden ratio in Islamic geometry
Why the pentagon and decagon carry phi by necessity - and how it fixes the canonical ten-fold star depth of 1/φ².
Girih vs zellige
Line geometry or cut-tile mosaic? How the two great Islamic pattern traditions differ in method, region and use - and where they meet.
Seamless repeat tiles
How a pattern becomes wallpaper, fabric or SVG: what makes a tile actually tile, and how to export one at true physical scale.