The Woodwork of Nasrid Spain: interlocking techniques and tastes
One of the under-researched areas in the spectrum of Islamic art and architecture is woodwork, partly because of the scarcity of surviving pieces, along with a loss of techniques and a lack of earlier documentations. While Islamic woodwork production could be found from Morocco to Central Asia throughout the late Middle Ages, it was in Nasrid Spain that this craft reached new heights. A synthesis of techniques and aesthetics as a result of cultural interaction between the three faiths — Islam, Christianity and Judaism — materialised an unique artistic vernacular that offered lasting impacts into the sixteenth century and beyond. Known as Mudéja, a Spanish term referring to Muslim artisans who continued to live and work in the Iberian Peninsula after the Christian conquest, the hybrid style spans textile, ceramics, carpets, architecture and woodcraft, reflecting both the Islamic decorative idioms and Christian patronage. As such, this essay aims to highlight the development of craftsmanship, materiality, ornamentations and functions of woodwork products in the period. The three objects in focus, namely the Cupola Ceiling from the Torre de las Damas (fig. 1), the Folding Chair at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 2) and the Chest with alla certosina decoration at the Victoria & Albert Museum (fig. 3), will be used to demonstrate how they are connected stylistically and methodically to works of art from the previous period, to each other, and to the Orientalist revival later on in the 19th century.
Before looking at the objects and their relationships, it would be useful to consider the status of wood as a material and its practitioners in mediaeval Iberia. According to Burr, craftsmen who worked with wood were highly skilled and regulated, first by the different woodworking guilds and later by laws, and they could be categorised into furniture makers (caixers), those responsible for ceilings, doors, and other architectural features (bosquers) and those who built undecorated boxes (capsers). Many worked in caliphal marquetry workshops to execute court commissions, whereas some opened their own furniture shops. In arid countries like Spain, wood was a luxury material as the heat caused large areas of it to split and warp, hence the inclination to assemble small wooden elements to make up the productions. Other factors like accessibility and trades contributed to the unique combinations of wood for their respective properties, in response to the tastes of the patrons and climatic conditions in the region. For example, walnut wood is strong and smooth but prone to worm and decay; cedar is insect repellent and easily obtainable from North Africa; chestnut, poplar and pine are available locally.
Cupola Ceiling
A perfect example of this is the Cupola Ceiling from the Torre de las Damas, now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. Built in the early 14th century during the reign of Muhammed III, it is the oldest palatial building preserved in the Alhambra. The ceiling is measured at 355 x 355 cm, with a square frame that turns into an octagon, then into a sixteen-sided base, which culminates at the high dome of 190 cm.
At each corner of the square is a pendentive featuring incised bands, geometric segments filled with carved vegetal motifs, and a miniature cupola in the middle. Above the pendentives sits a carved octagonal frieze of palmettes in between arches with kufic inscriptions and pine cones, against a deeply carved ground of arabesques. Eight more triangles are added to form a sixteen-sided muqarnas cornice with the repeated Nasrid motto "There is no victor but God" in cursive characters. The motto also appears in the centre of every eight-pointed star in all of the sixteen trapezoidal panels below the crown. The crown presents sixteen elongated hexagonal plaques with polychromed vegetal motifs pointing to the star at the pinnacle, underscoring the woodwork finesse synonymous with Mudèja creations.
This type of decoration is called the Castilian geometric strapwork wheel, which is formed by putting three set squares in a unique proportion to generate wheels of desired arms and their subsidiaries (ruedas desculatadas). A sixteen-point subsidiary wheel like this is created from an eight-point main wheel. First, use the head of the 22.5° main square and the head of the 67.5° profiling square to form the simple eight-point star, then surround the star with an octagon and bend the pairs of straps to cross each other with each one returning to and prolonging the path of the other. After that, use the 45° isosceles square to extend the two parallel straps of one of the arms and the nearest crossings of the adjacent arms to form the subsidiaries. Only carpenters with a wealth of knowledge about joinery can metamorphose the designs: from the rafter-collar beam joinery that began the use of set squares in Northern Europe, to the tongue-and-groove joinery that allowed prefabrication of roof sections in Spain, to the interlacing joinery that facilitated the polygonal imagination.
It is uncertain when this technique was first applied, but the eight-point star on the ceiling of the Royal Quarters of Santo Domingo could be considered a forerunner. In order to achieve its structural and decorative excellence, a mixture of cedar, poplar and maple wood were employed for the reasons mentioned above. Additionally, the way they were assembled and originally coloured in red, blue and green indicated an aesthetic reminiscent to that of tile mosaic, a lavish architectural decoration that only the court, nobility and elites could afford. In that case, the Ceiling from the Palacio de Altamira in Torrijos and the Ceiling in Museo del Greco in Toledo are a testament to the continuation of taste among the upper class in the centuries to come.
Folding chair
Parallel to the juxtaposition of Christian form and Islamic aesthetic is the Folding Chair at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, made in Granada in the late 15th century. It consists of two curved legs in the shape of open semicircles pivoted together through a fixed knob in the centre, with a back support and curved armrest to assert firmness and an elastic seat of embroidered leather to ease the fold. Made of walnut inlaid with ivory, steel, bone and various woods, the entire structure is covered with the classic Nasrid ‘petalled star’ motif, akin to the decoration on some Spanish armorial carpets datable from the sixteenth century or later. The leather upholstery is a modern addition.
The invention could be traced back to Mesopotamia as a portable tool, then evolved into a precious work of art worthy of pharaohs in Egypt; subsequently adopted by the Greeks, who turned its straight legs into semicircles; and rose to be a symbol of honour and dignity in the Roman Empire. Finally, it reached the Islamic world as early as the thirteenth century, evidenced in the miniature in the Kitab al-Ahjani manuscript where Badr ad-Din Lu’lu was depicted sitting on a throne with remarkable resemblance to the hip-joint chair discussed here. The folding chair remained to be a courtly possession in the East, typically reserved for visitors from Europe; in the West it became an article of domestic and ecclesiastical furniture during the Renaissance, a development fittingly encapsulated in the name Savonarola chair as a tribute to the Italian Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola.
Of particular differentiation from the European design is the use of Moorish technique, taracea, or inlay work. Such that the rods of different materials were cut very thin and attached to a layer of cloth, paper or leather, which was then stuck to the wooden surface of the object to be decorated. It allowed craftsmen to keep up with the demand when compared to the earlier labour-intensive mosaic incrustation that involves cutting the materials into thin strips, glueing them together to form rods, slicing the rods, fitting the slices in patterns and glueing them directly to the wood. An example of this technique is the exterior face of the cabinet doors from the Palacio de los Infantes. Even though similar inlaid patterns were also produced from the mid-fourteenth century in Italy and Mamluk Egypt, the rich veins of intarsia run back to the minbar commissioned by al-Hakam II in the tenth century for the Great Mosque at Córdoba. This is now lost, but the Kutubiyya minbar in Marrakesh embodies its form and decoration, suggesting an unbroken tradition of taracea in al-Andalus, and was later introduced into Italy.
Chest with alla certosina decoration
Further into the development of marquetry work finds the Chest with alla certosina decoration at the Victoria & Albert Museum, made of walnut inlaid with bone and rosewood in probably Barcelona between 1500-1600. Elaborately decorated overall, with the back plain, it features a chessboard on the underside of the lid, which can be folded down to be used as a gaming table.
Other embellishments include large circular medallions of either interlaced geometric pattern or a six-point star in the centre, encased within concentric bands of small triangles and diamonds, and sometimes larger triangles with ball finials alternating with flowers; three squares of starburst ‘panels’ interspersed by two Renaissance style flower pots of contrasting tones; interlocking semi-circles with hexagonal flowers and corner ‘snowflakes’ in the background; scrolling meanders or borders of octagons around the edges. Inside the chest, there are three compartments fitted with lids and some small drawers. Also known as cassone, it was likely to have served a woman for her trousseau when she got married.
In the sixteenth century, a simpler inlay technique emerged in the lands of the Crown of Aragon, especially in Catalonia. Here, small shaped pieces are individually inset into carved hollows in the wood, presumably cut with narrow chisel for those of square or near square shape and a burin or V-blade chisel where there is stringing. The applied strips were presumably inlaid with individual tesserae before being glued to the carcase. What this entails is a two-toned finish that is especially suitable for game boards and Renaissance motifs for a sense of perspective, both of which are incorporated into the design of this chest. It is termed alla certosina because of an altarpiece decorated in this way in Certosa di Pavia.
As much as the workmanship mirrors that on the bone and ivory caskets from the workshop of Embriachi, it is more likely to be a Spanish production for the Italian market due to the non-figurative decorations and geographic proximity between the two trading ports — Barcelona and Venice. Characteristically, this confusion of origin was the crescendo of an artistic juncture of techniques and materials between the two worlds.
Soon after that, the taste changed among the Spanish elites. In the 17th century, when the Catholic rulers imposed harsh limits on and eventually deported a large number of Muslim population, Mudéja style was no longer favoured by the high society but the Renaissance motifs from Italy, as a way to disconnect with the Islamic past and manifest the international prominence of Spain. Despite the attempt to cleanse its heterodox history, Spanish art was undeniably intertwined with the Islamic particularities, the exotic appeal of which attracted foreign travellers to visit the Alhambra in the 18th century. Such is the beginning of the romanticisation of the architecture, people and life in Orientalist Spain. Not until the writings by artist visitors like Washington Irving and Richard Ford in the 19th century brought attention to the restoration of the Alhambra, and the subsequent reproduction of Mudéja style objects for international exhibitions,was there an appreciation and acceptance of Islam as part of Spain’s national identity. Endorsing the popularity of this revival of interest are the X-shaped chairs with close imitation of the geometric stella compositions, inlaid techniques and textile patterns. Some of these examples are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. All in all, the woodwork of Nasrid Spain inherited practices from the Umayyad, and blended it with European tendencies to create a ubiquitous style that carries on to mesmerise tastemakers within and beyond the Hispano-Islamic frontiers.
Fig. 1 Cupola Ceiling from the Torre de las Damas, 14th century, Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin
Fig. 2 Folding Chair, late 15th century, made in Granada, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Chest with alla certosina decoration, 1500-1600, made in Barcelona, Victoria & Albert Museum
Bibliography
Rosser-Owen, Mariam, Islamic Arts from Spain, 2010
Kurz, Otto, Folding Chairs and Koran Stands, in Richard Ettinghausen (ed.), Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, 1972, no. 10, pp.299-306
Dodds, J. (ed.), Al Andalus - The Arts of Islamic Spain, New York, 1992
Nuere, Enrique, The Carpentry That Interlaced With My Life, 2020
G. Hardendorff Burr, Hispanic Furniture from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century, 1964
Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006, Chest with alla certosina decoration, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O123709/cassone-unknown/
Universes in Universe, Alhambra Cupola, https://universes.art/en/art-destinations/berlin/museum-of-islamic-art/alhambra-cupola
