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A gilded rosette on ink: a terracotta flower at the centre, a gold sixteen-pointed star, a lapis ring of small leaves, a lobed gold border and a fringe of sixty-four fine blue rays tipped with gold dots.
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The Pattern Atlas

Shamsa

No. 17 of 100 · free · 300 dpi

What you seeA gilded rosette on ink: a terracotta flower at the centre, a gold sixteen-pointed star, a lapis ring of small leaves, a lobed gold border and a fringe of sixty-four fine blue rays tipped with gold dots.

What it meansThe shamsa, little sun, is the radiant rosette that opens many fine Qur'ans and Persian manuscripts, often bearing the owner's name in its centre and surrounded by delicate painted rays.

Where it worksQuiet and luminous for a bedroom, a reading corner or a prayer space.

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2:3 · 7200 × 10800 px4×6 · 8×12 · 12×18 · 16×24 · 20×30 · 24×36 in
3:4 · 5400 × 7200 px6×8 · 9×12 · 12×16 · 18×24 in
4:5 · 7200 × 9000 px4×5 · 8×10 · 16×20 · 24×30 in
11:14 · 3300 × 4200 px11×14 in
A-series · 7023 × 9933 pxA5 · A4 · A3 · A2 · A1

Everything is one ZIP: every shape and size, the phone wallpaper, the SVGs and a printing guide.

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More from The Pattern Atlas

All 100 prints
The word hikma, wisdom, set large in bone in a Kufic typeface on a faint square grid, with terracotta baseline and ascender guides on ink.KuficNo. 18
The word salam, peace, set four times in black on pale panels, each labelled: Kufic, Naskh, Ruq'a and Nastaliq.Four ScriptsNo. 19
A chart of glazed zellige pieces in six colours, white, black, lapis, turquoise, honey and terracotta, each cut in the same five exact shapes: eight-pointed star, kite, triangle, square and hexagon.Zellige PaletteNo. 20
A six-petalled rosette in lapis and blue, drawn on a pale sky ground with its full construction: the first circle, six circles of the same radius centred on its rim, the hexagon and hexagram that join their centres, and the compass points marked in terracotta.Six-Fold RosetteNo. 21
A large twelve-fold rosette on terracotta: a navy twelve-pointed star ringed by twelve sand and cream petals, inside a circle with its dodecagon and twenty-four division marks, while the full star pattern runs on faintly behind it.Twelve-Fold RosetteNo. 22
A sixteen-pointed star on ink, drawn as one continuous gold line that joins every fifth of sixteen points on a circle, the rings of shapes it encloses filled in blue, turquoise and terracotta around a deep blue centre, inside a circle marked with its sixteen divisions.Sixteen-Fold StarNo. 23
A field of ten-fold girih on deep lapis: broad gold straps weave over and under through a large pattern of ten-pointed stars, and each large star is filled with the same kind of pattern at a third of the scale, in sky blue, clay and bone line.Darb-i ImamNo. 24
Four square panels of the same grid of octagons and squares, its edges dashed and their midpoints marked in terracotta. From each midpoint two lapis lines leave at a set angle, 45, 56.25, 67.5 and 78.75 degrees, and meet in stars that sharpen as the angle grows; each panel is cut along the pattern's mirror lines.Hankin’s MethodNo. 25

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