Angular Wall Decorations: Brickwork of Dezful City
Seyed Nezameddin EmamiFar
Reprinted from: Honar Nameh, University of Art, Tehran, No. 26, Winter 2003 (A brief of the article)


Trends in artistic creation in each period are the product of the artists’ ever lasting taste that have bequeathed their experiences to later generations in the course of evolving perfection and beauty. To critique it does not mean either total acceptance or outright rejection. It is to capture the achievements of the period in order to apply it to the present and future conditions.

Can we arrive at current cultural, artistic and commercial applications by analyzing brick decorations? In traditional Iranian architecture, they use tiles, mosaics, plaster carvings and brick work. Using “angular” bricks (cut 90 and 45 degrees angles) is a branch of brick decoration; whose use alongside enameled tile flooring is analyzed in this article.

The statistical sample of cases under study consists of houses, mosques and cemeteries in the city of Dezful in Khuzistan Province, south of Iran, which is considered the world’s most beautiful “brick city”. Using photographs, slides and interviews with masters, the patterns are identified along with theie applications, materials and installation. Geometric analysis of patterns can result in hundreds of geometric combinations and permutations and hence new patterns and designs.