The Tradition of Iranian Patterns

The Tradition of Iranian Patterns Maryam Soltani

University of Houston, School of Art Master of Fine Arts Graphic Design Spring2020

The Tradition of Iranian Patterns Maryam Soltani

University of Houston, School of Art Master of Fine Arts Graphic Design Spring2020

Submitted to the faculty of the School of Art at the University of Houston in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art, Graphic Design.

Thesis book and projects are designed

by Maryam Soltani.

Spring2020 Copyright Š 2020

Acknowledgments

This thesis has been completed due to support of many people and I wish to acknowledge them here.

I cannot express enough thanks to my committee for their continued support and encouragement: Sibylle Hagmann, Cheryl Beckett, Beckham Dossett, Fiona McGettgan, Joshua Unikel, Aaron Parazette,Yoon Kim and Natilee Harren.

I offer my sincere appreciation for the learning opportunities provided by my committee. Each provided helpful feedback and have been great teachers who have prepared me to get to this place in my academic life.My completion of this project could not have been accomplished without the support of my graduate studiomates, especially Jose Chavero Rivera , Hiba Osman,Jinyong Choi, Derek Witucki and Amira Maruf.

I would especially like to thank my husband Amir, who has been extremely supportive of me throughout this entire process and has made countless sacrifices to help me get to this point.

I also want to thank my siblings: Kamran, Feri and Sofi for believing in me and being there to support me personally throughout my MFA. Finally, special thanks to my parents for their continued support and encouragement. I wish they were here by me.

Without such a support system behind me, I doubt that I would be in this place today. Thank you all.

Table of Contents

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Introduction and Justification

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Antecedents and Precedents

12 14 32 34 35

Problem Statement

Process and Methodologies

Conclusion

Bibliography

Resume

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Introduction and Justification

Growing up with the impressive art and elegant architecture of the city of Isfahan, I fell in love with the patterns and geometries of my native Iranian culture.1 Nowadays it’s hard to travel to Iran and learn about the culture and people because of restriction such as travel ban and the fact that relationship between the United States and Iran is troubled by current and past diplomatic conflicts. On the other hand, media which is the other primary way of learning about other countries and culture, is not covering the whole reality of Iran and its people. This causes fear among Americans who might otherwise want to travel to Iran.

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Introduction and Justification

As an Iranian student living in the United States, I intend to create a bridge between these two cultures in order to demonstrate all of the aspects of Iranian culture and the reality of the art which exists inthe ordinary people’s lives.Through pattern, specifically the foundational patterns that define the vocabulary of visual art in Iran,I will tell the story of Iran’s rich culture and expose outsiders to the beauty of our art and culture. In Iranian culture, shape and form play a main role in architecture, textile design and even clothing,all of which display this culture. These particular patterns are historic and traditional, and are not extensively utilized in modern fashion or artwork. So, my attempts are focused on bringing them into contemporary world, update and transform them to be more open-ended.

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Introduction and Justification

My virtual exhibition consists of a virtual wall where my generator web-app is shown using a desktop computer on left and two clothes and two scarves on the right-hand side of the wall. The clothes and scarves are designed from patterns generated by my web-app and the order of items in my wall is set to mimic the repetition and geometrical concepts of Iranian patterns.

Introducing these patterns to the world of fashion and keeping them simple and usable, can open up a new category in Iranian fashion particularly in women clothing where more style and color is definitely needed.

User Interface (Apple desktop)

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Antecedents and Precedents Geometric Pattern Generator

Geometric Pattern Generator: Patterns are present in many cultures, but for some of them, mainly Islamic countries, patterns are central to their art have long been the primary type of artistic expression in architecture, fashion and home decorations such as textiles and rugs. Many Islamic designs are built on simple geometric shapes like squares and circles, where repetition, overlapping and interlacing transform them to an intricate and complex pattern. My work is influenced by a Qatari designer who also studied Islamic pattern to understand the geometry and repetition behind the complicated patterns. Manar Hashim reenacted the Islamic geometric

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pattern into new forms by braking them into lines and cycles. Her thesis explores the complex mathematical and algorithmic underlying grids to understand how geometric patterns are constructed.2 Inspired from her “complicated to simple break down� thought process, in my pattern generator, I provided the user with a series of simple shapes and multiple types of grids for a repetition pattern and let the user control the spacing to pitch the overlap between them. Unlike her, to offer more variety and realistic experience I went beyond simplified lines and used other shapes such as polygon, circle, hexagon to make complicated patterns.

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Antecedents and Precedents Geometric Pattern Generator

They are other contemporary artists who have studied the geometry and principles of Islamic patterns such as, Shurug Nahhasl, who has created new arabesque shapes by deconstructing and mixing older styles. My work stands out in two major ways from the existing studies. First, I have used computer to generate the patterns in an interactive way which enabled me to go beyond the limited shapes and simple lines to more options such circle, polygon, hexagon and etc. Second, I mostly focused on Iranian patterns rather

Modern Islamic Motif Design Developing new arabesque motifs by mixing style Shuruq Nahhasl March 4, 2015

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than general Islamic patterns which in nature is more colorful.

My user interface provides the option of choosing unlimited mixture of colors to construct the patterns which very well mimic the creativity of Iranian artists in utilizing the color element in their works. On the other hand, connectivity of my pattern generator with Shrug’s and Manar’s work is that all of us use principles of geometric patterns such as symmetry and repetition and other geometric principles.3

Antecedents and Precedents Digital prints on fabric

For the next step in my process I was inspired by Roba khorshid where she made fabrics designed by combination of traditional Islamic Ottoman motifs and motifs from central Asia, Persia, and China, resulting in a variety of botanical and geometric patterns. Adopting the idea of fabric printing from her, I designed and printed my own fabric using the patterns from my generator.

The major difference between her work and mine other than type of patterns, was that she mostly used different shades of blue color,4 but I tried to offer a wide range of colors using two color pallets in my UI.

Iznik Garden roba.khorshid 2005 Fabric

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Antecedents and Precedents Tailored Clothes

I used the printed fabrics to create new fashion in Iranian women clothing. I was influenced by Rodaba Omer and her collection titled “Tehzib� which means Islamic motifs in Arabic. She relied heavily on digital prints of Islamic motifs, arches and patterns and tried to recapture the complexity of Islamic patterns in a simple way.5 The last part of my work is focused on a similar concept however my fashion designs are directlyfrom the patterns which are generated from the user interface and printed on the fabric. They tend to have more Iranian taste to it with a contemporary look.

Rodaba Omer 2014 Tezhib

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Problem Statement

Patterns that can be found in contemporary Iran belong to a wide history, from the ancient Persian Empire (pre-Islam) all the way to the more recent Islamic eras. Each era, with its cultural and religious norms, impacted Iranian visual art differently. Also, throughout history, the name “Iran” or “Persia” has been used to refer to a much larger territory than what is currently incapsulated by today’s Iranian borders. Facts like these highlight the importance of studying the visual art of Iran. It is not an exaggeration to say that familiarizing Western nations with Iranian visual art is the key to closing the cultural gap between Middle East and West. I began asking myself questions about how to create a project highlighting Iran and Iranian culture that would encourage cultural understanding.

In particular, I wondered, How might I illustrate the reality and beauty of Iran within graphic design? What does the reality of Iran look like in art form?

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How can I use my experiences and influences from the Middle East and the United States to address issues beyond myself?

Beyond these questions, I also wondered if Iranian culture could be visualized at all because of how various, complex and evolving it is as a culture. I asked myself, How can I display the beauty of Iranian culture? What if I focus on art and history in Iran? Does it solve the issue of people being hidden by the media?

How can I find contemporary use cases for traditional patterns? How can I justify updating and transforming traditional patterns to become more open-ended?

What is a good modern use case for my transformed patters? How can I change women’s simple clothing into more colorful patterns?

My thesis, The Tradition of Iranian Patterns, is my attempt to answer questions like these and exploring their visual, cultural and political implications.

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Process and Methodologies Geometric Pattern Generator UI Sketches

By studying the art and history of Iran, I explored the patterns of Iranian architecture and rugs.

In my work, I created an interactive Iranian pattern generator with Python coding. I attempted to provide the user with an interactive way to experiment with the designs of specific patterns used in Iran, past and present.

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Process and Methodologies Geometric Pattern Generator

The decisions behind the interface were based on different rules that have been used as the grammar of traditional Iranian pattern such as: shapes, color, quantity, repetition, and rotation.6 The aim of my interface is to break down the complex shapes into these component parts, each of which can be adjusted by the user within the interface. Users can work with this tool and make their own pattern or choose from five reference options.

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Process and Methodologies Patterns and Fabrics

These options are extracted from a book by Eric Broug called “Islamic geometric patterns�. The book includes more than 40 patterns from all over Islamic world and a step by step methodology using the principles of geometry to show how they are generated from simple shapes.7 I chose couple of patterns from Iran as

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my samples for the generator.

By using the guidelines provided, the user can work toward recreating the original Iranian pattern.

The other intent of this generator is to give historical patterns a modern view, while serving as an educational tool to teach viewers about the importance of patterns in Iranian visual culture.

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Process and Methodologies Clothes (manto)

The dress code for women in Iran is limited both from a color and coverage perspective, meaning that their clothing should cover most of their body and preferably made from darker color fabrics. I wanted to go beyond architecture and textile and expand the use of these elegant patterns in contemporary fashion design. I used an online fabric printing (contrado. com) service to print some of my patterns on different cloths such as cotton and satin.

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Process and Methodologies Clothes (sarafon)

The input to the printing service was a high-resolution .png format file and then I chose between different types of fabric to be printed on. The ultimate goal was to make some women’s clothing from these fabrics so I had to choose the appropriate fabric type based on its application. For instance, for a more formal dress (Sarafon) I chose satin so that the dress stays frim and easily style-able while for more casual every day garment (manto) cotton fabric is a better fit.

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Process and Methodologies Clothes manto and Sarafon

Women clothes The Tradition of Iranian Patterns Spring2020

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Process and Methodologies Color palette

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The choice of pattern and color was probably the most import part.

Inspired by tile works in Naghshe Jahan square for the color combination I chose blue color which is dominant in Iranian patterns and symbolizes sky reminding the freedom of human sole.8 Other colors such as yellow and red spectrums are coming from the color of raw bricks that the structureis built with.

Green also can be found frequently in my fabric and in Iranian patterns as it stands for liveliness and is associated with paradise.

Process and Methodologies Color palette

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Process and Methodologies

After that I designed couple of women clothing and head covers (scarf) I hired a tailor to make them for me. Manto, sarafon and scarf are the very daily elements of women garments in Iran. Introducing novelty and variety to these clothing is very important in many ways. While women in Iran dress similar to others in different parts of world in their privacy or home parties, it becomes a matter of dress code when they want to come out on the

streets. I have tried to show that how combination of color and pattern can diversify the limited options that currently exists for women dress code on the streets. Also, the fact that we can bring some of our forgotten patterns beyond textile and architecture to daily lives is appealing to me. All of these mentioned outcomes are beside the main focus of the project which is to introduce Iranian pattern to western society through contemporary visual elements.

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Process and Methodologies Virtual Blaffer Wall

For the sake of my exhibition I put the tailored clothes on two mannequins to show the outcome of my design and produce a volumetric vision from them.

The scarves were fit to mannequin heads in order to mimic the concept of a hejab.

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Conclusion

The goal of this thesis is to display Iranian culture using a pattern generator toolkit that I designed to simplify the pattern generation process. Also using the toolkit, I wanted to explore the possibility of expanding Iranian patterns beyond architecture and painting and step into fashion world. My intent was not only to make changes in the Iranian world of fashion but also, I wanted to introduce American people to Iranian culture by letting them choose and wear a different style of fashion. This will help my audience in the United States to improve their knowledge about Iranian culture and design, however, it could be better to get some feedback about my generator while people using this tool, unfortunately because of COVID19 I couldn’t have this opportunity to show in Blaffer Art Museum.All that said, the project was challenging in many different ways. Collaborating with people from other backgrounds such as computer science for my generator toolkit was difficult.

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Working with an American tailor to plan and make an Iranian dress like a manto, which she had never seen before, was another challenge.

All of these communications were impacted by the COVID19 situation.

Photographing my works at home and under ambient light without professional tools was also another issue I faced.On the other hand, this topic pushed me to understand what my underlying interests are in design and the world at large. In making the generate, I was able to get hands-on experience in UI/UX design.I also enjoyed working in fashion and want to start working in clothing design with the plan to start my own brand in the future.

Looking back on my thesis project, I believe I took important steps forward as a designer, as an Iranian designer living in the United States.

This project has laid the foundation for my immediate future when I move to San Francisco and my future in the longer term, wherever it should take me.

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Bibliography 1. Irangazette, Saeedeh, Gk, Dave, Mohamed Srilanka, and Christian L. Esfahan The Most Beautiful City in the World.

January 10, 2020. https://www.unusualtraveler.com/esfahan-the-most-beautiful-city-in-the-world/ 2. Hashim, Manar. Circles and Lines: Restructuring Islamic Geometric Pattern Into Forms.

April 19, 2020. https://www.behance.net/gallery/54067867/BFA-Senior-Thesis-Capstone-Student-Projects 3. Nahhas, Shuruq. Modern Islamic Motif Design: Developing New Arabesque Motifs by Mixing Styles, April 19, 2020 https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses/8217/.

4. Khorshid, Roba. Fashion & Surface Pattern Designer, April 19, 2020. https://www.robakhorshid.com/about.

5. Omer, Rodaba. Musings of a fashion designer, April 25, 2014. https://owaisisms.wordpress.com/tag/rodaba-omer/.

6. Mosaic Knitting Pattern Generator. April 23, 2020. http://laurakogler.net/processing/MosaicK 7. Broug, Eric. Islamic Geometric Patterns.

Thames & Hudson, 2019.

8. Iranian Handicrafts. April 19, 2020. https://www.fotros.com/en/blog/Iranian-Handicrafts.

9. ChartGen. knitting chart generator, April 23, 2020.

10. El-Said, Issam. Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art. London1976.

11. Patterns In Islamic Art. October, 2012. www.patterninislamicart.com 12. Islamic Design. October, 2012. www.catnaps.org/islamic/geometry.html 13. Morris, William. Some Hints on Pattern Designing, Some Hints on Pattern Designing London; Longmans & co. 1899 14. Islamic Patterns Design. November, 2012. www.surfacefragments.blogspot.com/2010/10/moorish-remains-in-spain.html 15. Islamic and Modern Styles. Text and Images, Islamic Design October, 2012. www.catnaps.org/islamic/geometry.html 16. Bouaissa, Malikka. Malikka Bouaissa. Auteur Op Al arte magazine, September 10, 2013. https://www.alartemag.be/en/author/malikka-bouaissa/page/4/.

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Resume

MaryamUISoltani & GRAPHIC DESIGNER

346-234-8559

www.maryamsoltani.com

EDUCATION

EXHIBITIONS

Aug 2016 – Jun 2020

Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art (Graphic Design) University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

The Tradition of Iranian Patterns, Thesis Exhibition Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas (postponed due to COVID19) | 2020

Oct 2010 – Dec 2015

B.S. in Historical Monuments Conservation & Restoration Isfahan University of Art, Isfahan, Iran

My Rosary. 4 x 35" School of Art Student Exhibition.

Juried exhibit. Blaffer Art Museum | 2019

EXPERIENCE

Textperience. 20 x 20" School of Art Student Exhibition.

Juried exhibit. Blaffer Art Museum | 2019

Aug 2018 – Aug 2019

Aug 2017 – Aug 2018

University of Houston, KGMCA, Houston, Texas Instructional Assistant - Assisted students to work with graphic design equipment in the general lab - Provided guidance to students on how to operate the Adobe suites - Monitored large format printers, laser cutters, and scanners with maintenance and troubleshooting - Printed and assembled print collateral - Checked computer hardware & functionality

Influence Map. A1.

School of Art Student Exhibition.

Juried exhibit. Blaffer Art Museum | 2018

University of Houston, School of Art, Houston, Texas

Frame to Reframe. 20 x 15".

Graphic Design Graduate Student Exhibition Third Space Gallery, University of Houston | 2018

Instructional Assistant (Graphic Design) - Plan, organize and deliver graphic design instruction’s in didactic, laboratory and/or classroom.

- Checkout/return of video and photography equipment, ordering and inventory of lab supplies and equipment.

- Order and process new materials and equipment - Process and maintain periodical files.(Library) - Code library materials.

-Stock or shelve items.

Mar 2013 – Jun 2015

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mariiisoliii@gmail.com

Imagine at the Bayou Wallpapers.

“Annual Student Exhibition” group exhibition Blaffer Art Museum | 2018

Encounter. Meeting points on Buffalo Bayou Japhet Creek Park, Houston | 2017 Butterfly Garden. Collaborative Design Installation. 26 x 9'.

University of Houston | 2017

Pouyeshgar Sepahan Inc., Isfahan, Iran Web & UI and Graphic Designer

Manipulated Thought: A History of Diagrammatic Visualization. Collaborative Exhibition. Third Space.

University of Houston | 2017

- Designed and created Interactive Web Interfaces - Motion Graphics - Designed Businesses Cards/ Posters/ Boucher/ Logo - Branding

Ashoora: Religious Ceremonies Group Exhibition in Central Library of Isfahan Farshchian Institute, Isfahan, Iran | 2014

AREAS OF EXPERTISES

LANGUAGES AND SKILLS

Graphic Design UI/UX Design Web Design Interaction Design Design thinking and strategies Fabric Designer Motion Graphics Coding

English, Persian Adobe Graphic Design Software: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, XD, Fireworks, Flash, After Effects, Premiere, Acrobat Microsoft Office: Word, PowerPoint, Excel HTML & CSS

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Master of Fine Arts Thesis Book, The Tradition of Iranian Patterns was produced by Maryam Soltani, a graduate student in the School of Art. The typefaces used are Avenir designed

by Adrian Frutiger and Mr Eaves. Modern by Zuzana LickoThe binding is perfect bound.