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estebanana -> Andalucian Roman mosiac- For Mr. R. (Apr. 16 2014 1:06:12)
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Mr. R check this out:
I've long held that Spanish guitar rosette design owes as much or more to Roman mosaic than Arabic design. In general Arab geometric systems work with different angles. Roman design tends to be more about borders with fields of images. I could say much much more, but I'll let you see.
It would be an interesting discussion to post up examples of each Roman and Arabic. Not to prove one over the other but to see how they might have influenced rosette design, if at all.
It seems like if you look back at 19th century rosette work you see a lot of border motifs that feel more Roman than Arabic. It also follows that rosettes are made of sticks which make a kind of miniature screen of pixel points and those points are set in a grid. The grid only allows you to make images which can be formatted to the grid. Arabic work in general is not based on grid patterns, but you do see a lot of grids in Roman work.
The grid system is integral to the way an image is created in some Roman work and rosettes. This could be by pure coincidence, or it could mean that since the formats are the same this kind of decorative art was derived from Roman design.
There are other decorative arts in Spain which are clearly derived from Arabic patterning, but rosettes don't seem to display it as much, until the twentieth century. Which leads me to think that these Arabic motifs were added later to build upon the mythologies and stories from the times of Moorish occupation. I see Arabic motifs in rosettes as a late superimposition of design to make guitars have more of a visual connection to the popular ideas of Arabic influence in Flamenco more than a design element that was around in use in Spain during the times the Spanish guitar was developing in the early 19th century.
I could also be totally wrong, but I've been looking at this idea since the mid 1990's when I happened into a room of authentic Spanish Roman mosaic floors in the Dumbarton Oaks House in Washington D.C. - I stepped into the room and it hit me as I looked at the borders of mosaic around the field of images, this is a rosette border from a Torres or early Cadiz maker guitar!
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