Contains 500 photographs, map and glossary.

Photographer John Hedgecoe and the editor Salma Samar Damluji were given unprecedented access to Morocco's finest buildings, including Royal Palaces, and to private and state museum collections. Through the auspices of the Ministry of Culture in Morocco, a unique book on one of the world's great forms of art has been created.

It was through the art of zillij, intricate cut-tile patterns, that Moroccan craftsmen achieved their most sophisticated expression of precision, spatial geometry and aesthetics. This book is a careful study of the achievements of those craftsmen in the art of zillij. It is also, as importantly, an investigation into the relationship of zillij designs to ceramics, which present the designs on a new scale and with a new function.

Zillij:The Art of Moroccan Ceramics is essential to the library of all those interested, either professionally or otherwise, in architecture, design, ceramics, Islamic and decorative arts.

Having established photographic studies the Royal College of Art, London, John Hedgecoe took up the chair of Photography in 1975 and has been Pro-Rector since 1981. He had a distinguished career as staff photographer and associate editor of Queen magazine and has worked worldwide for numerous other magazines and newspapers. He has written many books on photography, among them The Book of Photography, The Art of Colour Photography and the Photographers Handbook, which have sold millions of copies in 28 languages and won many awards.

Having graduated from the Architectural Association in 1977, Samar Damluji has specialised in Islamic and Arab Architecture. She worked closely with Hasan Fathy in Cairo and in the early eighties she took up a post with the UN ECWA Human Settlement Division which extended her work in the region to Yemen and Arabia. She returned to London in 1985 and joined the Royal College of Art where she is Doctor of Islamic Architecture. She is also senior tutor at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

"An exceptionally beautiful book" - Art Review