Symmetry & Pattern: The Art of Oriental Carpets

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• Learn more about crafts, geometry, patterns, symmetry, and weaving.

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Oriental carpets are created in the traditional rug-weaving areas of the world: Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, western China, and India. The Art of Oriental Carpets encourages symmetry analysis by examining these objects to identify areas of pattern that exhibit expected repetitions, and areas that vary from that expectation. The four basic symmetries — translation, reflection, glide reflection, and rotation — can all be observed in the gallery of images of oriental carpets. The patterns of the carpets are more than appealing to the eye, they are an attempt to organize space. According to this website, “All patterns reflect the pure beauty of numbers, considered to be of divine origin in Islamic doctrine. And by their very nature, patterns exhibit multiplicity as expressions of unity, which is an attribute of God. Patterns in Oriental carpets may thus be seen as expressive of a world view in which multiplicity exists in relation to the unity of all existence.”