What Tazhib Is
Tazhib is the Persian art of illumination: the gilded, intricately patterned borders and medallions that have framed manuscripts, Qur’ans and books of poetry for centuries. The word comes from the Arabic for gold, and gold is still its heart. Around it grow the two families of motif every illuminator learns first, the eslimi, flowing arabesque stems, and the khatai, the stylised blossoms and leaves that open along them. My own work begins there, with the same vocabulary those manuscripts used, painted by hand in Canberra.
Learning from the Masters
I began studying tazhib in 2010, in private lessons with Master Bidabadi and Master Moharrami, illuminators and miniaturists who also practise tash’ir, the art of the margins. They taught me the way the craft has always been taught: by copying, by repeating a single curve until the hand no longer argues with it, and by learning to see the whole page before touching the first petal. Everything on this page grows from those lessons.
Tash’ir, the Art of the Margins
Tash’ir is illumination’s quieter companion. Where tazhib fills a medallion with colour and gold, tash’ir lets gold alone draw animals, birds and foliage across the margins of a page, so that the border becomes a landscape in a single tone. It asks for a lighter hand and a different kind of patience, and I return to it whenever a composition needs air around it.
Brush, Gold and Time
A finished panel hides a long sequence of small decisions. The design is drawn and refined, the gold is laid and burnished, the ground colours go on flat, and only then does the fine brushwork begin: outlines finer than a hair, shading built up in translucent layers, a thousand small strokes that no one is meant to notice one by one. Each of the six works on this page is painted in watercolour and gouache, with gold leaf laid by hand, and all of them were made between 2023 and 2026. A single artwork can take weeks. I do not rush it, because tazhib does not reward speed; it rewards attention.
Tradition and My Own Hand
I respect the classical forms, but I am not copying old pages. The palette shifts with the mood of the piece, a shamsa, the sunburst medallion, may open into something more contemporary, and the scale sometimes grows far beyond the margin of a book. What stays constant is the discipline underneath: symmetry, rhythm, and the balance of gold against colour that makes an illumination feel alive rather than merely ornate.
Where the Paintings Live
My illuminated paintings are displayed at Gem Barber in the heart of Canberra, the barbershop I co-own, where they are seen by people who came in for a haircut and sometimes leave having found a painting. My earlier paintings, from the years before these, have all gone to new homes; the six shown here are the most recent. If you are interested in an artwork or would like to see more, you can visit the shop or write to me on Instagram, and you can read more about me and my novella Invented With Love on this website.
