Luca Mozzati’s Islamic Art (Prestel, 2010) is rather more of a coffee-table book than Lynn Gamwell’s Mathematics + Art, but the text isn’t at all bad. Its main failing is that it concentrates nearly exclusively on Architecture. This at least permits some of the glories of architectural decoration – arabesques, geometric patterns, and calligraphic inscriptions – to be displayed in rich colour, but at the price of leaving out the enormous wealth of carpets, brasswork, wood-carving, glass, and all the rest.

There are to be fair some nice miniatures from Turkey and Mughal India; there are a few details of brasswork and tiles, the occasional wooden casket, and some parchments, but all the same, the book is seriously unbalanced. Perhaps the author simply meant it to be called “Islamic Architecture” and was overruled by his publisher. At least it gives an idea of some of the splendours on offer.

For a book on the principles of at least some Islamic architectural decoration (basically, just girih strapwork), see the review of Eric Broug’s Islamic Geometric Design.