The Pattern Is Not a Border. It Is the Argument.

Last winter, I unfolded a length of brocade that had been stored beneath cedar for three decades. The field appeared almost black until the cloth moved; then antique gold rose across it in small, deliberate turns. Nothing in the pattern was merely decorative. Each return carried the pressure of the hand that had set it.

Repetition is a way of keeping watch

We now call the repeated form a motif, as if it were a detachable ornament. In the old cloth, repetition does a harder job: it holds a surface together while refusing to become identical. Look closely at any two turns of the boteh and one is always answering the other, never copying it.