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    Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction
    Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction
    Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction
    Ebook273 pages1 hour

    Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction

    By George Bain

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    About this ebook

    The construction principles of Celtic art were re-discovered in the middle of the 20th century by George Bain. Until his writing, the intricate knots, interlacings, and spirals used in illuminating The Book of Kells and in decorating craftwork and jewelry seemed almost impossible, "the work of angels." In this pioneering work, George Bain shows how simple principles, no more difficult than those used in needlecraft, were used to create some of the finest artistic works ever seen. He also explains how you can use these principles in re-creating artifacts and in creating your own Celtic designs for art and craft work or even for recreational use.
    Step-by-step procedures carefully introduce the simple rules and methods of Celtic knot work and the well-known designs from the great manuscripts and stone work. Later chapters build up to complex knot work, spiral work, and key pattern designs, with special coverage of alphabets and the stylized use of animals, humans, and plants. Altogether over 225 different patterns are presented for your use, with hundreds of modification suggestions, 110 historical and modern artifacts showing designs in use, a great number of letters including six complete alphabets and 25 decorative initials, and a number of animal and human figures used in the original Celtic works.
    Artists, students, craftspeople, even children can work with these patterns and instructions for creating dynamic designs for use in leather work, in embroidery and other needle work, in metalwork, jewelry making, card design, borders, panels, illuminations, and in countless other ways. Mathematicians will find a great deal of pleasure in the geometric principles on which the patterns are based. Art historians and others interested in studying Celtic art will find a great number of outstanding art works and the best presentation in English for understanding Celtic design.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateJul 24, 2013
    ISBN9780486317441
    Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction

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    Reviews for Celtic Art

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    • 5/5
      The Revival of a Lost Art...There are lots of books that illustrate Celtic Art...George Bain illustrates how to do it. Take a space in a design, use the Principles of Construction outlined and fill with amazing loops and whorls, keys and spirals...Mantles, Jewel Cases & Panels have all gotten the treatment and are always among the 1st things to disappear at Festival. My copy fell apart from use and it's rebound form is never far from my hand in the studio. Celtic Art was among the many lost artistic techniques...J Romilly Allen's early inspiration and George Bain share much of the credit for Celtic Art's revival...
    • 5/5
      This is the inner sanctum on the subject of Celtic art. It gave me some serious respect for the thing....
    • 4/5
      When this book of celtic knotwork interlacings was first published in 1951 it was hailed as "a veritable grammar of ornament". It is a fine reference book and practical textbook for the art student and craftsman seeking simple constructional methods for laying out complex ornamental schemes.The entire celtic school of knot interlacing patterns, braids, step patterns, chevrons and keys are examined and detailed. Photos and sketches show these designs used in stone carvings, in illuminated manuscripts, and in modern woodwork, embroidery, carpets, ceramics, graphic and other designs. Artistic, geometric and mathematical methods are combined to produce wonderful art.
    • 5/5
      Superb detail and exposition. Pictures show process and precise drawing techniques used.

    Book preview

    Celtic Art - George Bain

    Finis

    R

    ETROSPECTION

    over the past quarter of a century, when the author first commenced to apply, for experimental purposes, some of the knowledge of the methods of construction used by the ancient Celtic Artists, that he had then acquired, to the Art Curriculum of the Schools of an area where he was Supervisor of Art, shows that such an opportunity greatly helped him in the production of this book. The ready response of all pupils from infants to higher secondary and evening art schools was remarkable.

    To the so-called backward pupils, those who had not been taught how to look and those who had failed to understand how to look at three-dimensional things so that they could be represented by copying the visual facts, the Celtic methods brought the joys of creation and permitted the exercising of individual tastes in arrangements, rhythms, colours and uses, often awakening interests in the ordinary representational forms of art that had chief place in examinations. Some of the results from the schools of that period may be seen in the two full-page illustrations in the section dealing with modern application of Celtic Art.

    The co-operation, enthusiasm, untiring energy and taste of Miss Jane Lundie, a teacher of needlework and embroidery, made possible the production of beautiful works by individual and communities of pupils, who, by the conditions that then existed in the Scottish Schools, were mainly girls waiting until they reached the age of 14 to be freed from school.

    The author’s real interest in Celtic Art began after he had been many years in Art colleges, including a few in the Royal College of Art, London, as a National scholar in drawing and painting. During the whole of his Art student period the study of Celtic Art was distasteful to most Art students, for no instructions could be given. The only way was to attempt to copy an example, so that by comparison no mistakes could be found by the teacher, whose knowledge of the subject was merely that of ability to classify it with other Arts by general appearances. Original designs were considered impossible and were rarely attempted. Adaptations by copying was the only use.

    That such is still the attitude to this great native art of Britain and Ireland in the system of Art teaching under the guidance of the Education Departments of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland requires no furnishing of proof by the author of this book, unless to state, that the only opposition during the past quarter of a century to his self-imposed attempt to spread a knowledge of the Celtic Art culture amongst the peoples of Britain and Ireland, has been from a few holders of Art College diplomas, that had allowed them to become recognised as teachers of Art. Resenting the introduction of the study of a form of Art of which they knew nothing, except the few copies of fragments that they had been compelled to do for historic ornament examination purposes, they sum up the attempt to make a modern use of the principles of the construction methods of the Celtic Artists, of which they have no knowledge, as useless for "it can only be done by

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