Image Collection: Basic Knotwork Designs

These are the kind of things I always picture when I think of "Celtic Designs". It's kind of ironic, then, that these motifs appear rather late in the history of Celtic art! As discused in the Knotwork Tutorial Introduction web page, interlacing was probably adapted from northern European or Germanic sources. Of course, the brilliant Insular artists itegrated it into the deep tradition of Celtic art, and so made it (in some way) their own.

Basic Categories

Clip art materials using "regular" knotwork templates are divided into the following categories:

Source/Visual Index

You may also review clip art materials on this site using an alternate index, the Knotwork Visual Index. It is sorted by the source for the original pattern, and shows a "thumbnail" version of the underlying knot template.

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