Star and cross
النجمة والصليبStars and crosses alternating across the field.
How it is made
The ground
The pattern is not drawn freehand onto the page. It grows out of this tiling — truncated-hexagonal — which never appears in the finished drawing and decides everything in it.
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 52° and 64°, a range settled by eye.
The numbers
- Ground
- truncated-hexagonal
- Symmetry
- Periodic
- Contact angle
- 52°–64°
- 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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