The original furniture of the palace is represented by one of the famous Alhambra vases, very large Hispano-Moresque ware vases made in the Sultanate to stand in niches around the palace, famous examples of Hispano-Moresque ware dating from the 14th and 15th centuries.
42.
The Hispano-Moresque style emerged in Al-Andaluz or Muslim Spain in the 8th century, under Egyptian influence, but most of the best production was much later, by potters presumed to have been largely Muslim but working in areas reconquered by the Christian kingdoms.
43.
The first 19 chapters of the " Grammar " present key examples of ornament from a number of sources which were diverse both historically and geographically notably examining the Middle East in the chapters on Arabian, Turkish, Moresque ( Alhambra ) and Persian ornament.
44.
At least one authority, Alan Caiger-Smith, excludes this pottery from the term " Hispano-Moresque ", but most who use the term at all use it to include Malaga and other Andalusian wares from the Islamic period as well as the Valencian pottery.
45.
Peter Fuhring, a specialist in the history of ornament, says that ( also in a French context ) : The ornament known as moresque in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ( but now more commonly called arabesque ) is characterized by bifurcated scrolls composed of branches forming interlaced foliage patterns.
46.
The word was originally a noun ( 1560s ), from Italian grottesco ( through Middle French ), literally " of a cave ", from Italian " grotta " ( see grotto ), is an extravagant style of arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
47.
Hispano-Moresque ware pottery began in the south, presumably mainly for local markets, but Muslim potters were later encouraged to migrate to the Valencia region, where the Christian lords marketed their luxury lustrewares to elites all over Christian Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, including the Popes and the English court.
48.
The word " maiolica " is thought to have come from the medieval Italian word for Majorca, an island on the route for ships that brought Hispano-Moresque wares to Italy from luster pottery copying Spanish examples, and during the 16th century its meaning shifted to include all tin-glazed earthenware.
49.
The guide pointed out the 2, 000-year-old Roman marble tripod; the Hispano-Moresque rug on the floor, one of the few remaining 15th-century Spanish royal carpets in the world; and in the dining room, two 16th-century tapestries that once belonged to poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
50.
The Hispano-Moresque pottery wares of Spain were first produced in Al-Andaluz, but Muslim potters then seem to have emigrated to the area of Christian ornament, which made them easy to accept in the West, indeed by the late Middle Ages there was a fashion for pseudo-Kufic imitations of Arabic script used decoratively in Western art.
