The Poetics of Ornament

This chapter continues with the paradigm of rhetoric established in Chapter 4 of the book, but moves discussion from metaphor to ekphrasis—that is, description that seeks to make an absent artwork or building present in the mind of the reader or listener. The example of carved marble jar stands, called kilgas, from medieval Cairo are used to pose a question that crosses modalities: Can decoration be description? Individual stands have been inscribed with a dramatically reconfigured and miniaturized set of components from a full-scale form of architectural water feature. Tracing the redescription of architecture onto object, this chapter applies to its subjects the rhetorical model of ekphrasis, arguing that the atomized architecture of effect and spectacle encountered in medieval Arabic and Persian poetry is paralleled in the refraction of architectural form upon three-dimensional objects.