From the Associated Press:

DETROIT (AP) – In the heart of the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S., the Detroit Institute of Arts this weekend is opening a new permanent gallery of Islamic art showcasing exhibits including a rare 15th-century Quran of a Mongol conqueror.

…

Among the gallery’s treasures: one of the largest-known Ottoman mosque candlesticks from about 1500; an elevated giant cut-velvet summer floor covering made between 1650 and 1700 in Turkey, believed to be the largest of its kind; and a 15th-century leather-bound Quran, whose gold-flecked paper was given by the Ming emperor of China to Timur, one of the Mongol conquerors of the Middle East.

Check out the collection on their website: http://www.dia.org/asp/search/ExecuteSearch.asp?DID=3&department=Islamic%20Art.

Wissam recently contacted me to let me know that he has launched a new website, http://wissamshawkat.com. On this website you will find a wonderful mix of his contemporary and traditional calligraphy work—everything from fine art to logos, typography, environmental graphics, and graphic design work. I’ve included a few of my favorites below, with his permission. I encourage you to check out his site—and get ready to be inspired.

The Dubai Arabic Calligraphy Centre cordially invites you to attend a specialized set of lectures that covers the history of the art of Arabic calligraphy.

By Dr. Sulieman Berk

7-9 January 2010, 6 to 8.30 pm, Luxury Ball Room, Centre of Excellence – BLDG 2, Gate Village, Dubai International Financial Center

For inquiries, please contact: 050 5533835

See the invitation below for further details.

I recently found out about a fascinating project by the artist Sandow Birk, who is working to create an “American” Qur’an. The lettering and illustration for this manuscript are informed by a uniquely American aesthetic, which contrasts sharply with more traditional manuscripts found in the Middle East. Below is a description of the project:

[This is] an ongoing project to hand-transcribe the entire Qur’an according to historic Islamic traditions and to illuminate the text with relevant scenes from contemporary American life. Five years in the making, the project has been inspired by a decade of extended travel in Islamic regions of the world and undertaken after extensive research.

To find out more, visit: http://www.sandowbirk.com/paintings/recent-works/.

Discover Islamic Art (http://www.discoverislamicart.org), a project of the Museum with No Frontiers, is a virtual museum that “explores Islamic art and material culture in the Mediterranean region.” This website is an excellent resource for educators and those who are interested in learning more about Islamic art.

You can explore the museum’s permanent collection by country and/or by dynasty. Use the “My Museum” feature to gather and save your favorite items from the Museum’s collection in one place.

Check out their introductory guide to Islamic art in the Mediterranean (http://www.discoverislamicart.org/gai/ISL/), their online exhibit on Arabic calligraphy (http://www.discoverislamicart.org/exhibitions/ISL/arabic_calligraphy/index.php) and the teacher’s guide with several games and educational activities (http://www.discoverislamicart.org/learn/).

Gutenberg’s revolution, which made possible many other technological revolutions in Western Europe and North America, couldn’t have happened without two highly significant characteristics of the Roman alphabet. First, the isolated nature of its letterforms and, second, the fact that the shape of each letterform is wholly independent of its context.

Visual language says a great deal about a culture and in particular these two alphabetic characteristics say a great deal about that of ‘the West’. This was a culture that valued the breaking down of things into simple, consistent and context-independent components – so as to exercise greater control and effectiveness over those things – whether the ‘thing’ in question was a system, a process or an aesthetic composition. And the monks of the mediaeval scriptoria, whose incanabulae Gutenberg so carefully copied, clearly understood this: they had produced the alphabetic characteristics that enabled Gutenberg’s revolution to facilitate a proto-industrial process of document production. It was this emphasis on decontextualisation – literally, separating the letterform from its context – that later gave birth to the stripped back aesthetic of modernist typography.

The Arabic alphabet, which was common to all of the languages of the Islamic world (principally Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu) provided a different trajectory to modernity. Arabic may only have 28 letters but in writing the appearance of each one of those letters depends, critically, on whether it appears at the beginning, middle or end of a word (and in fine calligraphy this is extended to include a much wider range of variations). Furthermore, although its letterforms are no less considered than their Roman counterparts, each is valued less, aesthetically, than the beauty of the unique word shape they contribute to (and, indeed, than the form of the whole text). The Arabic letter is inseparably part of a whole – which makes for exquisite calligraphy, dependent entirely upon the fine judgment of the calligrapher – but does not lend itself to a simple, repeatable set of mechanical rules.

…

In the 2010s it seems more likely that we’ll be celebrating a ‘world design’ aesthetic that is about positive qualities of connection and context, dialogue and relationship – qualities that resonate increasingly strongly for many of us. And, ironically, these are exactly the qualities that have always been implicit in the visual expressions of the Arabic alphabet.

The full article can be found here: http://www.limitedlanguage.org/discussion/index.php/archive/the-tale-of-two-alphabets/.

So what do you think? Is the recent creative explosion in the world of Arabic typography responding to our need to be more inter-connected? How have our typographic sensitivities changed in recent years?

If you know of a class or course in Arabic script calligraphy near you, please send me an e-mail! I’ve published a list of the classes that I know about here: http://calligraphyqalam.com/resources/classes-and-teachers.html.

I just read an article at http://logoorange.com that discussed 2009 logo design and branding trends. In this article, the Paris-based design studio analyzes new logos produced in 2009 for recurring design patterns. They have come up with several categories, including psychedelic pop backgrounds, origami, tactile elements, “classic modern,” pictograms, etc. One of the categories they discuss is called “arabesque.” The logos in this category use the Arabic script or decorative elements which are reminiscent of Arabic. I particularly liked this quote:

Logo designers who use the Arabesque style often have to be sensitive to one of the defining characteristics of Arab calligraphy: thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes with in-between gradations.

Check out the rest of the article here: http://www.logoorange.com/logo-design-09.php.

I went to a craft festival in DC this weekend, and came across a lovely shop featuring Arabic writing on a variety of products. The shop was called Moth Written, and is the result of a collaboration of two artists—one from Maine and one from Morocco. While the Arabic writing on their products isn’t calligraphy per se, it is a great example of how the Arabic language is become (slightly) more mainstream in American culture. The booth generated a lot of interest at the craft fair, and the “I love DC” (in Arabic) buttons and bags were especially popular. Visit the Moth Written website for more information about the artists.