David Wade has contributed approximately 1,500 images of Islamic art to the Artstor Digital Library. These images illustrate patterns and design features found throughout the Islamic world, from the Middle East and Europe to Central and South Asia.

The selection has been drawn from Wade’s Pattern in Islamic Art, an exhaustive online photographic archive. The images record common patterns, thereby revealing the underlying principles of order and balance in Islamic art. Islamic artists and craftsmen employed these intricate designs to adorn all types of surfaces — stone, brick, plaster, ceramic, glass, metal, wood, or textiles. The collection contains examples of ornamentation from monumental architecture to the decorative arts.

David Wade is an artist and architect, as well as the author of several books: Pattern in Islamic Art, 1976; Geometric Patterns and Borders, 1982; Crystal and Dragon: The Cosmic Dance of Symmetry and Chaos in Nature, Art and Consciousness, 1993; Li: Dynamic Form in Nature, 2003; and Symmetry: The Ordering Principle, 2006.