One of my hopes for the cultural renewal is the revival of a
Christian form of geometric patterned art. With this in mind I
have done my best to study past work, and try to discern the
principles that underlie its creation. I wrote about resources
that help in this respect in a previous article, here. If tasked
with the design of an ornate sanctuary floor now, for example,
how might one go about it? One approach, which was used by the
Cosmati craftsmen of the middle ages was to have a large design
for to fill the whole shape and then to infill with a variety of
different geometric patterns. The Cosmatesque style is named
after the Cosmati family which, over several generations,
developed this distinctive style of work. If they were covering
a large area, such as a whole church floor, they worked on three
scales. For the grand form they tended to compartmentalize into
rectilinear shapes. Then the sub-form would be a geometric
design consisting of faceted polygons or interconnected circles.
The final stage woul