'Versions and Visions of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman World' West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design, History, and Material Culture, 22:1, Spring/Summer 2015, 44-69. (original) (raw)

Ever since William Chambers built his fantasy Alhambra garden folly in Kew Gardens in 1758, the famous Nasrid palace in Granada has been reproduced and re-imagined by architects and designers all over the world. From the Alhambra Palace theatre that stood in Leicester Square in London to the Alhambresque interior of the pumphouse at Potsdam - these are versions of the palace, filtered through both the publications of Owen Jones and fantastic imaginations, in which the Alhambra was used to conjure up an exotic, luxurious or wondrous place. But exotic was not the only meaning of the nineteenth-century Alhambresque. In this paper I look at how the Alhambresque was used to express different ideas about identity and culture in the nineteenth century, focusing on examples in the Ottoman Islamic world. Using specific examples I show the variety of complex meanings that came to be expressed through the many different versions of this medieval Islamic palace.