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High-relief glass decoration. The effect is achieved by the difficult method of wheel-engraving in cameo rather than intaglio (Tiefschnitt). The process was first used in Islamic glassware and was then used in 17th- and 18th-century Germany, where its finest exponents were Gottfried Spiller (1663–1728), who worked at the Brandenburg glassworks (e.g. covered goblet, ...

Ornamental glass shade for an oil lamp, designed to be hung in a mosque. It is usually shaped like a vase, with a bulbous body, a flared neck, a flat base, and applied glass loops from which it was suspended. The form emerged in late 13th-century Syria, and many of the finest examples come from Syria and Egypt. From the 16th century mosque lamps were made in Europe (notably Venice) and exported to the Islamic world.

The inscriptions on mosque lamps generally mention the donor and include the opening lines of the ‘Verse of Light’ in the Qur'an (24.35), which likens God, the light of the heavens and the earth, to a glass lamp. Over a dozen mosque lamps from the three reigns of al-Nasir Muhammad (reg 1294–1340 with interruptions) represent the summit of 14th-century enamelled glass. A band of tall script at the neck with blue lettering on a gilded ground decorated with polychrome scrolls, leaves and buds contrasts with another band on the body inscribed with gold letters on a blue ground with scattered gold blossoms. At least 50 lamps inscribed with the Light Verse and the name of Hasan (...

German glass manufactory. In 1866 the German glassmaker Fritz Eckert (c. 1840–c. 1905) founded a factory in Petersdorf, Silesia (now Pieszków, Poland). At first the factory specialized in historical styles ranging from Islamic designs to enamelled 17th- and 18th-century German Humpen. In 1890 a group of original designs in opaque glass known as ‘Cyprus glass’ was introduced, and from ...

Architectural opening to admit light and air that may be covered with a screen, grille, glass or shutters, or left without covering depending on the surrounding environment and climate. Windows in Islamic architecture frequently, although certainly not always, take the form of an Arches in Islamic architecture; such arch forms come in a dizzying varieties of types.

The use of marble or alabaster window grilles was adopted by Islamic architects from the Byzantine building tradition (see Islamic art §II, 3, (ii)), and has become a distinctive and often spectacular feature of Islamic architecture: for example, the stone window grilles of the Great Mosque of Damascus (705–15; see Great Mosque of Damascus [Umayyad Mosque]) and those in the Friday Mosque in Ahmadabad, India (1424). Wooden window grilles made up of pieces of turned wood arranged in intricate geometric patterns (Arab. mashrabiyya) became a characteristic of windows in many parts of the Islamic world, especially Egypt. Metal examples also exist, for example in the 15th-century madrasa and mausoleum of Amir Mahmud al-Ustadar in Cairo, although these tend to be less intricate. Panels of carved stucco were also used as ornate window grilles. Such stucco screens were carved away from the building site and then fitted to the window; they could consist of an outer unglazed screen and an inner layer containing colored glass, or of a single stucco panel ornately carved, such as those seen in the Mosque of Sunqur Sa‛di in Cairo (...