DEBT TO PERSIA

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 184, 2 May 1933, Page 9

DEBT TO PERSIA

Influence on Architecture (Reuter’s Special Service.) London, March 2. London may not “go Persian” again —as it did after tho great Persian exhibition some years ago—in consequence of Hie exhibition of photographs of Persian architecture now on at the Royal Institute of British Architects, but tliis unique show is jn-oving sufficiently interesting in its own modest way. Tlie bulk of flic collection, consisting of more than 200 photographs, has just arrived from Russia after a delay caused by the recent bad weather in tlie Baltic. They provide a comprehensive view of more than a thousand years of Persian architecture, which, because of its beauty, its decorative ingenuity and richness, its engineering resource and integrity, as well as its historical importance, must be accorded a very high rank. Tlie exhibition emphasises tlie striking debt which European Gothic stylos owed to Persian origins. Several panels in the palace of the Ail Kapu recall a similar mural ornament in the old Shakespeare room at Oxford, hotli consisting of interlocked lattice work enclosing flower sprays. Tlie designs may have been brought to England on printed silks or cotton by such intrepid travellers as Anthony Jenkinson, who went to Persia in the sixteenth century. Some of the sculptured ornaments shown in the photographs, particularly the column bases of four lions back to back- and another column base of lions ;in<l maidens, reveal a sculptural sense, ;i civility and a decorative power that few thought could be found In Persia.