These studies cover Islamic decorative arts from the 7th to 17th century, exploring iconography and meanings in various media such as ceramics, metalwork, coins, carpets, calligraphy, woodwork, and ivory. Islamic art melds earlier iconography with its symbols, presenting a rich and diverse artistic heritage.
Islamic artists channeled their energies not into easel painting and large-scale sculpture, but rather into what Western scholars, obeying a very different hierarchy of art forms, rather disparagingly termed the "decorative arts" or even "the minor arts".
