Blessing, Patricia

Princeton University

Research Title: Spaces of Artifice: Objects and Interior Design in Anatolia, c. 1200–1500 

Dr.Blessing is Assistant Professor of Islamic Art History in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University, where she received her PhD in 2012. Her first book, Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture in the Lands of Rūm, 1240–1330 (Ashgate, 2014) investigates the relationship between patronage, politics, and architectural style after the integration of the region into the Mongol empire. Her second book, Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press 2022) analyzes how transregional exchange and the use of paper shaped building practices across the Ottoman realm. Blessing’s current project, Spaces of Artifice: Objects and Interior Design in Anatolia, c. 1200-1500 addresses the relationship between objects, design, and interior spaces in the Islamic architecture of Anatolia, from the late twelfth to the late fifteenth centuries. Larger issues to be addressed in the resulting book are those of interior design and planning; multi-sensory perception of space of objects. Blessing’s work has been supported by the British Academy, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the International Center of Medieval Art, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Barakat Trust, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation.