Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This series focuses on the most important forms of Eastern art, providing a survey of the major stylistic and technical developments and the historical events which influenced them.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This modest-sized book is an accessible and informative introduction to Islamic tiles from the ninth through the 19th centuries. Porter, a curator at the British Museum, planned the book as a handbook to the Museum's collection of tiles, but the inclusion of a succinct chapter on the craftsmen and techniques, and illustrations of Islamic ceramics from other collections and of several tile panels that are still on buildings has transformed the volume into a well-rounded guide to the subject. It does not attempt, however, to encompass the history of the buildings that were reveted with tiles throughout the Muslim regions, but its readers may be enticed to investigate the subject of Muslim architecture if they are not very clear about the placement of tiles or about the nature of and reason for such revetments on buildings. A few color and many black-and-white photographs illuminate the range of variety in tiles that once faced walls of Islamic buildings inside and out. Although Porter's book does not replace the more comprehensive and scholarly study of tiles by the late Arthur Lane on the subject, A Guide to the Collection of Tiles (London, 2nd ed., 1960), it complements the older publication by updating it by means of the many references to recent research. A short but sufficient bibliography directs interested readers to further titles on the subject. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; professional; general. U. U. Bates; CUNY Hunter College