Lute Rose Windows

Toward a Higher Fidelity Series: Umanut,  -  closeup

What is a "lute rose"?  It is the opening that is cut into a lute to create a soundbox.  The lute as musical instrument derives from the oud, an ancient instrument of the Arabic origin carried to Al-Andulus, that is to say Spain, during its Golden Age. Al-Oud العود becomes La Oud which settles into "lute" in the Renaissance vernacular.  The lute rose (or oud shams - shams meaning "sun") maintains its characteristic arabesque form.  In my own work I have found the lute rose form to have a beauty and movement that goes beyond the compass and straight rule into a fluidity which lends a kind of roundness and femininity to an angular world. 

Kaddish  detail

According to Friedemann Helwig, who seriously researched the symbolic geometric language of lute roses,  the lute rose as pierces through the visible into the invisible worlds.  The 6-fold forms which predominate among lute rose patterns symbolizes the intrinsic harmony of the universe.

Lute Rose window from The Cosmic Dervish copperwork illumination

For me these forms have become windows peering into the numinous, co-present nature of reality, as expressed in the Song of Songs 2:9 : 

Here it stands behind our wall, winking through the windows, twinkling through the openings.

Flight for Life - A love song      Lute Rose detail.

I draw from the broad resource of Islamic geometries to find an appropriate lute rose window for an illumination.  Any form that functions as a window through the worlds can qualify.  The beauty of these geometries is that any form is only a snapshot of an infinitely extending reality, a harmonic moment captured within the boundless celestial symphony.

Dynamic Intervention