← How these are made

Triangular web

النسيج المثلث

Sixfold rosettes on a triangular grid — the densest ground offered here.

How it is made

The ground

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

triangular

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 40° and 70°, a range settled by eye.

40°
55°
70°

The numbers

Ground
triangular
Symmetry
Periodic
Contact angle
40°–70°
Construction
Hankin polygons-in-contact

Sources

  • Kaplan, Craig S. (2005). Islamic Star Patterns from Polygons in Contact. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2005. pp. 177–185. read it
  • 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

Type any name and it picks one of these fifteen, and an angle inside that family's band. The number the letters carry is what chooses.

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