Thursday, February 6, 2014

Star of Lakshmi

Detail of the railing, scali Manzoni, Fosso Reale, Livorno
We have already seen this detail of the railing of the Fosso Reale as decoration, but in its simplest form it is called Star of Lakshmi and in Hinduism it represents the eight forms of the goddess Lakshmi.
Otherwise, it may just be a Rub el Hizb, a Muslim symbol represented as two overlapping squares, which is used as a marker for the end of a chapter in Arabic calligraphy. You can find it in Unicode as the glyph ۞.
The American band Faith No More used the eight-pointed star on the cover of their 1985 album We Care a Lot and this symbol is present on every page of their website.

External links: Star of Lakshmi - Lakshmi - Rub el Hizb - Faith No More - We Care a Lot (Wikipedia) - Faith No More (Official website)

9 comments:

Taken For Granted said...

Great looking iron detail. Thank you for the information about this graphic shape.

Jack said...

The wonderful things we learn by reading our friends' blogs . . .

Randy said...

Beautiful design.

cieldequimper said...

I'm amazed at what you find.

Dina said...

So much to learn here. Thanks for getting me started. Especially what pertains to Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock.

So cool how they bent the metal into this shape for your railing.

Halcyon said...

What a nice find. And thanks for the explanation. I had no idea of the meaning behind this symbol!

Luis Gomez said...

So beautiful VP. Thank you.

Andy said...

They say rust is a photographer's friend.

Traveling Hawk said...

A very interesting and well documented explanation, VP. Thanks!