Building Ornament

This chapter scrutinizes the allusive potential of ornament and the two-dimensional paradigm that dominates ornament studies. Surveying the historiography of architecture-as-ornament, the chapter explores ornament’s relationship with the third dimension. In particular, it focuses on the potential for architectural motifs, especially arches and arcades, to confound two-dimensionality through the generation of fictive spaces that articulate and order form as well as surface. The chapter focuses first on the image of the arcade in various media and particularly on a group of inlaid metalwares with Christological scenes. Next, it moves to thirteenth-century Mosul and the surrounding area to explore the reciprocal relationship between plastic systems of three-dimensional ornament on buildings, metalwares, and a remarkable group of large architectonic earthenware water jars known as ḥabbs.