Design consisting of an elaborate vase with three flowers arranged symmetrically along the central axis. The two outer flowers cross the middle one one third of the way up. Two blossoms with eight trapezoidal petals in red are set above the crossing point. The middle flower ends in a lily, whereas the two outer flowers end in a rose-like blossom. The flowers are depicted in a strongly stylized way.

The fine black lines in the upper part of the cartoon and on both sides of the vase indicate the lead lines.

Very torn

Full-size cartoon of the centre panel of the replicas IG_485 and IG_487, designed by the British architect William Burges (1827–1881) for the Arab Room of Cardiff Castle in Wales, executed between 1881 and 1882 on behalf of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute (1847–1900). As with Islamic stucco and glass windows, the flower and vase motif is symmetrically arranged. The cartoon largely corresponds to the executed windows, only the red colour of the eight-petalled flowers above the crossing point of the outer stems differs.

The design is reminiscent of one of the standard types of qamarīya documented in the Ottoman empire. Burges based the design of the windows on his on-site observations, made during a trip to Istanbul in the summer of 1857, when he visited various mosques, among them the Süleymaniye Camii, with its refined stucco and glass windows (Burges, 1858, p. 89, see IG_189). During his stay, Burges made colour drawings of the windows. One of the drawings was published in 1904 by Burges’s friend George Aitchison (1825–1910) to illustrate the Islamic tradition of stucco and glass windows in his contribution on ‘Coloured Glass’, issued in the XIth volume of The Architecture Journal (Aitchison, 1904, fig. 1; IG_91). When compared with the cartoon, we find clear references to the depicted window.
In the 19th century, stucco and glass windows with the vase motif were much appreciated by Western artists and architects, as is attested by a significant number of book illustrations, sketches, and paintings (see for instance IG_43, IG_118, IG_149, IG_153, IG_437, IG_443, IG_461), as well as by replicas integrated into Arab-style interiors across Europe (IG_54–57, IG_64, IG_431, IG_264, IG_371–375).

The fine black lines in the upper part of the cartoon and on both sides of the vase indicate the lead lines observable in the executed windows. Replicas made in the traditional stained glass technique can also be found in the Selamlik of Oberhofen Castle (IG_322–328) and in the fumoir arabe of Henri Moser-Charlottenfels (IG_64). In contrast to these Swiss examples, the replicas at Cardiff Castle were sandwiched between two wooden lattices to reproduce the effect of the stucco grille of original qamarīyāt.

The cartoon discussed here is part of a lot of five designs held at the Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff, which correspond to the replicas installed in the upper part of the Arab Room. Whereas IG_501, IG_502, IG_504, and IG_505 show the windows of the north and south side (IG_484, IG_486), IG_503 represents the centre panel of the windows located on the east and west side (IG_485, IG_487). Together with IG_501, IG_502, and IG_504, this cartoon has been classified among Burges' drawings. A comparison of the hand-written annotations on IG_501 and IG_504 with those on the signed construction drawing IG_505 seems to indicate that IG_501 and IG_504 were also drawn by the British architect and brother-in-law of William Burges, Richard Popplewell Pullan (1825–1888), who completed the Arab Room after Burges’s death in April 1881 (Newman, 1995, p. 205).