Ceiling Facet

Lines intersect and interlace to form a star and polygon pattern in this ceiling fragment. In prestigious buildings, panels of cedar carved and painted with complex designs were often employed to cover the wooden beam construction used throughout Morocco during the reigns of the Saʿdid (1554–1659) and early ʿAlawid (1664–present) dynasties. For viewers glancing upward, the pattern may have seemed celestial, alluding to a divinely ordered universe. The interlacing geometric mode of ornament underwent intense development around the year 1000 in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire. Initially applied to objects or parts of buildings with symbolic or religious value, the style came to be used for a broad range of structures and portable objects. Geometric interlace spread eastward and westward, but its decorative possibilities — rhythmic and complex, yet austere — found particular favor across North Africa from the late eleventh to the early seventeenth century.