Paris: capital of Islamic design

Al Ahram Weekly (David Tresilian)

The magnificent setting of the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris is presently the backdrop for Purs décors? Arts de l'Islam, regards du XIX me si cle, a survey exhibition on the influence of Islamic art on late 19th and early 20th-century European artists and designers.

Since the exhibition is in Paris, the focus is on mainly French collectors, designers and manufacturers. But the theme of the exhibition -- the ways in which elements from Islamic art and design were appropriated by European artists and designers hungry for new ideas -- has a larger European resonance. . . .

The architectural remains of southern Spain provided a point of entry for Europeans interested in Islamic design. From the 1860s onwards, however, and particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt replaced Spain as the rendez-vous for all those taken up with the growing European craze for Islamic art and architecture. Artists and researchers like the Frenchman Emile Prisse d'Avennes made their way to Cairo's traditional areas, producing plans and pattern books for "Egyptophiles" in Europe. Among such works are Prisse d'Avennes's well-known volumes on the Islamic art and architecture of Cairo, and on Islamic design more generally, published in the later 19th century.