Author Description

Zillij: The Art of Moroccan Ceramics represents an outstanding photographic record of Moroccan ceramics and cut tiles, with written contributions from leading art historians and architects specialising in these fields. Photographer John Hedgecoe and the editor Salma Samar Damluji were given unprecedented access to Morocco's finest buildings, including Royal Palaces, and to private and state museum collections. Through the auspices of the Ministry of Culture in Morocco, a unique book on one of the world's great forms of art has been created. It was through the art of zillij, intricate cut-tile patterns, that Moroccan craftsmen achieved their most sophisticated expression of precision, spatial geometry and aesthetics. This book is a careful study of the achievements of those craftsmen in the art of zillij. It is also, as importantly, an investigation into the relationship of zillij designs to ceramics, which present the designs or a new scale and with a new function. Zillij: The Art of Moroccan Ceramics is essential to the library of all those interested, either professionally or otherwise, in architecture, design ceramics, Islamic and decorative arts.