Bookbinding

Unknown

14th century · Leather, gold; stamped, tooled · Islamic Art

A twelve-point star serves as the central motif from which the geometric design of this cover emerges. The leather stain varies between two shades of brown to distinguish the shapes, further highlighted by the use of gold-tooled lines. Blind tooling is also employed to give texture to the leather surface interspersed with gold points. The interior flaps are covered with a lighter brown leather with an arabesque pattern. Two other similar bookbindings (33.14 & 33.103.3) in the collection exhibit the same stylistic characteristics, testifying to the popularity of such elaborate covers for manuscripts. Further, the use of complex geometric ornament as a decorative device in Egypt and Syria during the thirteenth- and fourteenth-centuries was prevalent in an expansive variety of objects, from large wooden furnishings to small portable objects such as this bookbinding.

Artist

Unknown

Date

14th century

Medium

Leather, gold; stamped, tooled

Department

Islamic Art

Credit line

Gift of H. Kevorkian, 1933