5000 Designs and Motifs from India

Ajit Mookerjee

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486319995
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Dekorative Kunst

Over the last five thousand years, Indian artists have developed a wide range of unique and decorative artistic styles. This rich collection of copyright-free designs and motifs draws on that heritage to provide today's artists and designers with a stimulating and practical archive of usable material.
In this volume are designs adapted from seals, dolls, and toys of the Harappa culture; punch-marked coins and pottery from South India; Ajanta and Bagh murals; Muslim monuments; Buddhist temples; textiles from Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and other regions; and much more.
Embodying the variety and complexity of traditional Indian design, the motifs in this collection will be of immediate use to artists and illustrators as well as providing an exciting glimpse into the rich store of Indian decorative art.

INTRODUCTION

ART is applied life. India, which has had a rich and varied existence for thousands of years, has naturally come to inherit a unique art tradition. Indian art in its distinctive form is now increasingly being recognized as worthy of study and appreciation. Universal in character, it has at the same time its own well-defined features, influencing, and being influenced by, other forms of art.

Indian decorative art as a special subject of study has not yet been taken up seriously although random references to it in many of the books and treatises on the broader subject of Indian art have served to invite more attention to it. Decoration is part of any object of art and as such is discussed often along with its integral quality. A separate study of this area is warrant...