Style combination · Contrasts

Armenian Manuscript Illumination × Islamic Geometric

Horseshoe arches and vegetal and geometric ornament are shared, but the Islamic geometric tradition keeps its arches and fields aniconic, while Armenian books fill the same arches with birds, beasts and painted saints; choose whether a frame should carry figures or only pattern.

From the research on Armenian Manuscript Illumination

Mix them and make something Armenian Manuscript Illumination Islamic Geometric

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Islamic Geometric, their arrangement from Islamic Geometric, the finish from Armenian Manuscript Illumination. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Armenian Manuscript Illumination Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition

Type from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Brush & pen calligraphy
Ornamented display
Colour from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Jewel & metallic
Full polychrome
Form from Islamic Geometric: Non-representational
Geometric tessellation
Composition from Islamic Geometric: All-over field
Central symmetry
Surface from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Armenian Manuscript Illumination

Vow

Uncial Antiqua, standing in for Erkatagir ('iron letters'), the uncial held to be Mesrop Mashtots's original form of the alphabet of 405, used for manuscript text from the 5th to the 13th century and still preferred for inscriptions

Text · Islamic Geometric

A visual system shared across the Islamic world in which proportioned calligraphy, compass-and-straightedge geometry and the vegetal arabesque carry meaning and beauty in place of figurative imagery. Star-and-polygon tilings repeat across whole surfaces as if continuing beyond the frame, while Kufic, Thuluth and Naskh inscriptions give hierarchy to buildings, manuscripts and objects.

Reem Kufi; Islamic Geometric used Kufic and Thuluth

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Armenian Manuscript Illumination, with a counter-accent from Islamic Geometric. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Armenian Manuscript Illumination Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition

#f0e6cf ground · 36%
#2b1e16 ink · 14%
#c0392b accent · 18%
#c8a046 accent · 14%
#1e3a8f accent · 10%
#2e7d5b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e6cf;
  --ink: #2b1e16;
  --accent-1: #c0392b;
  --accent-2: #c8a046;
  --accent-3: #1e3a8f;
  --accent-4: #2e7d5b;
  --font-display: "Uncial Antiqua", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Reem Kufi", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Armenian Manuscript Illumination: These are Gospel books, lectionaries and Bibles of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and their crosses, evangelist symbols, portraits of Christ and the saints and holy names keep their sacred meaning; do not use them as texture, logos or decoration on trivial products. Armenian letter art, including ornamental letters made of birds, animals and people, is living heritage (UNESCO Representative List, 2019) practised by calligraphers, carpet weavers, embroiderers and jewellers, so commission or collaborate with Armenian artists rather than lifting motifs, and have any Armenian text written or checked by a fluent reader instead of assembling letters as pseudo-script. Manuscripts were seized, scattered or lost in the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Zeyt'un Gospels among them (its canon tables were removed and sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1994; a 2015 agreement acknowledged the Armenian Church as their owner while the leaves stayed at the Getty), and several of the scriptoria (Vaspurakan, Cilicia) now lie outside Armenia: credit the work as Armenian, naming its Byzantine models, and the Syriac ones of the earliest books, where they matter, and do not fold it into a generic 'Byzantine' or 'Oriental' style.

Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition: Qur'anic verses, the names of God and the Prophet and other sacred phrases must not be cropped, distorted, mirrored, used as texture or printed on floors, footwear or throwaway packaging; have any Arabic-script text read and approved by a fluent reader or calligrapher. Abstract geometric pattern is far less sensitive than script, but credit the traditions and makers it comes from.