The life work of the architect and art historian Christian Ewert was the investigation and analysis of west Islamic architectural adornment, from its flowering in the 10th Century through to the 12th Century. His last monograph, completed shortly before his death, expands our perspective by examining a closely related art form: Spanish-Islamic ivory sculptures. With great subtlety, and his usual meticulousness, the author lays out a thorough graphic documentation of the decorative surfaces of 21 boxes made of ivory, analyzes their decorative elements, and places them in comparison with examples of contemporaneous architectural design elements. With the founding of the magnificent palace city of Madinat al-Zahra' near Córdoba in 936 came an increased demand for luxury goods and, in light of the refined Caliph-emphasizing court ceremony and the influx of high-ranking foreign guests and ambassadors, the demand for gifts of honor. To fulfill that task, a master elite created a vast selection of variant forms of wealth that is difficult to fully register and is found in sculptures and in ivory carvings alike. weiterlesen