Najdi patterns
One motif from the doors of central Najd, worked into patterns you can use.
The triangle band — two rows of triangles facing across a line of discs — is documented on Najdi doors and window shutters. 3reeq takes that one motif and runs it through the design guidelines’ own method: repeat it, abstract it, scatter it. Each step is a different pattern with the same origin.
The patterns
Four so far, from the one motif. Each tiles cleanly — along a line or across a field.
The documented form: triangles down, a row of discs, triangles up. Repeats along an edge.
On doors and window shutters
Across the rail of a door.
The band stacked. The triangles line up column to column and the pattern fills an area.
On cloth, tilework, a wall
Woven or printed on cloth.
Abstracted: discs dropped, triangles reduced to a line, the repeat widened. A quiet border.
Framing a page or a screen
A rule at the head of a page.
The triangles scattered and thinned. Reads as texture, not figure — it sits behind text.
As a background ground
Behind a block of text.
How they’re made
The guidelines’ own five-step method, applied to the one motif. Each step is one of the patterns above.
Reference — the band, as recorded on central Najdi doors.
“Traditional geometric patterns may be used as a reference.”
Repeat — tile the unit on both axes → Field.
“… reinterpreted … by repeating it, thus forming a new geometric pattern.”
Abstract — drop the discs, outline the triangles, widen the repeat → Outline.
“… a simpler version yet still inspired by its predecessor.”
Scatter — random placement and weight → Speckle.
“… speckled or dappled to form areas of light and shadow.”
An interactive generator — change the motif and the settings, watch the patterns update — is in progress. Until then, these four are hand-run.
Construction
- Repeat
- band = 3× band height — ADG FIG.30 ratios (2×, 3×, 3.5×, 6×)
- Clearance
- triangle apex to disc — 8% of band height, never zero
- Symmetry
- bilateral, mirrored across the horizontal axis
- Ochres
#781F19#9D622B#EFA94A— iron oxide, local- Ground
#E6D2B5gypsum ·#1A1512soot- Indigo
#063971— traded up the Gulf; rarer inland- Assets
- band · field · outline · speckle — SVG, tile on their stated axes
No source publishes this band’s proportions. Alnaim gives one ratio — 2:1, and it is the door’s. The geometry here is a construction: proportions chosen, not derived. The method is the guidelines’; the patterns are 3reeq’s.