← How these are made

Six-pointed field

الحقل السداسي

Sixfold stars on the kagome ground of triangles and hexagons.

How it is made

The ground

The pattern is not drawn freehand onto the page. It grows out of this tiling — trihexagonal — which never appears in the finished drawing and decides everything in it.

trihexagonal

The contact angle

At the middle of every edge sits a point. Two rays leave it into the tile, each at the same angle from that edge, and run until they meet another. That angle is the whole parameter. This family is drawn between 45° and 72°, a range settled by eye.

45°
59°
72°

The numbers

Ground
trihexagonal
Symmetry
Periodic
Contact angle
45°–72°
Construction
Hankin polygons-in-contact

Sources

  • Hankin, E. H. (1925). The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 15. Government of India, Calcutta. ii + 25 pp., XIV plates. read it
  • Kaplan, Craig S. (2005). Islamic Star Patterns from Polygons in Contact. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2005. pp. 177–185. read it

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