The word tessellation itself derives from the Greek tessera, which is associated with four, square and tile. Tessellation is a system of shapes which are fitted together to cover a plane, without any gaps or overlapping. And of course, there is so much maths involved! It seems a golden opportunity to link art with maths, allowing the creative side of your children to take over. There is so much scope for practical exploration of tessellations both For many, this is their preferred method of learning and, in general, it engages pupils more effectively. So often in the classroom we try to make activities more enjoyable for the children by varying our teaching to include a more tactile or "hands on" approach. You can still find zillij installations in Morocco and other predominantly Islamic countries, on the walls and floors of mosques, homes, public squares, and tombs.'Why tessellation?' you may well be asking.
This style of mosaic tilework is made from individually hand-chiseled pieces set into a plaster base. In Islam, using tessellations to decorate surfaces and is called zillij. Inside the fortress, walls are adorned with countless colored tiles in geometric formations. It was constructed by the Muslim Moors in the 14th century and became the royal residence and court of Mohammed ibn Yusuf Ben Nasr. One of the most famous examples of Islamic tessellation art is in the Alhambra, a huge palace located in Granada, Spain. Therefore, they embraced the abstract characteristics of tessellation and used colorful geometric tiles to create non-representational patterns.
This is because many Muslims believe that the creation of living forms is solely God’s doing. Religious Islamic art is typically characterized by the absence of figures and other living beings. Perhaps the most celebrated style of tessellations can be found in Islamic art and architecture. While the Sumerians of 5th and 6th BCE used tiles to decorate their homes and temples, other civilizations around the world adapted tessellations to fit their culture and traditions the Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Japanese, Chinese, and the Moors all embraced repeating patterns in their decorative arts. Tessellations in Ancient Islamic Art and ArchitectureĬeramic tile tessellations in Marrakech, Morocco (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, (CC BY-SA 3.0)) Now that we’ve covered the basic math of tessellations, read on to learn about how they were used throughout history. Each vertex is surrounded by the same polygons arranged in the same recurring order. Semi-regular tessellations occur when two or more types of regular polygons are arranged in a way that every vertex point is identical. A checkerboard is the simplest example of this: It comprises square tiles in two contrasting colors (usually black and white) that could repeat forever. Regular periodic tiling involves creating a repeating pattern from polygonal shapes, each one meeting vertex to vertex (the point of intersection of three or more bordering tiles). The most common configurations are regular tessellations and semi-regular tessellations. There are many types of tessellations, all of which can be classified as those that repeat, are non-periodic, quasi-periodic, and those that are fractals.
An example of semi-regular tessellation (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, (CC BY-SA 3.0))