Rare Masterpieces of Arab and Islamic Designs comes with a slip-case, and its large format of 21x15 makes a great gift or addition to any library collection.

Publishers' Note

L'art Arabe, a rare collection of breathtaking set of plates (wood engraving, heliogravures and color lithographs) of the famous Islamic-Arab designs and ornaments published by the French art historian Prisse d'Avennes sometime during 1869 after buying them from the sixty or so French artists who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his compaign against Egypt in 1798. Those selective grop of artists were assigned by the Emperor to illustrate the art treasures of rare architectural ornament (tiles, wood carvings, paintings on walls and ceilings, woven hangings), carpets, paper appliques and illuminated books.

After the failure of the Emperor's campaign, those artist dispersed in the Arab land, each to his devices, depicting in overwhelming illustrations the riches of the Islamic Arab east. It took Prisse d'Avennes more than twenty years to collect those masterpieces and then to publish them in exquisite plates with incredible accuracy, stating that his principal goal was to furnish exciting visual ideas to decorative artists of his own day.

Prisse d'Avennes published the collection in three volumes, which constituted a grammer of Islamic decorative art in its authentic color unmatched except on the walls of Alhambra palace in Granada and some of the mosques of Cairo and Damascus.

It is far from exaggeration to say that our purpose in re-producing this priceless collection in one single volume, from the rare original that we possess, was to follow the footsteps of Prisse d'Avennes not for profit since the price justifies our claim, but to participate in helping Artists, craftsmen, decorators and collectors of the marvelous to obtain this staggering number of inspirational material to expand their horizon of creativity in the field of the "Arabesque", the aesthetic device of refined, rhythmical, interwind flowing lines which epitomizes the Arab world.