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A Brief Appreciation
of Celtic Art

The Celts are among the greatest peoples of European history, and indeed prehistory; long before Rome conquered the known world, Celtic speakers shared many bonds of language, customs, art and culture across a vast area. They dwelt not just in Britain and Ireland, but from Spain and France to southern Germany and the Alpine lands, Bohemia, and later in Italy, the Balkans and even central Turkey. The definition of Celtic, even among the ancient Greeks and Romans, was a linguistic one. A Celtic people are a people who speak, or were known to have spoken within modern historical times, a Celtic language.

Portrayed by the Greeks and Romans as fearsome and dangerous barbarians, the non-literate ancient Celts bequeathed no texts to redress the biased picture left by the Classical authors. Today, however, archaeology has given them a voice, through the physical traces they left behind, revealing much about Celtic society, economy and religious practices not mentioned in the surviving Classical texts. Celtic metalwork in particular shows a technical and artistic brilliance unsurpassed in prehistoric Europe. The Celts can now be seen as an intelligent, complex, wealthy and accomplished family of societies, who came to play a pivotal role in the making of Europe.

The people we call Celts have deep roots in European history, which can be traced back for at least twenty-five centuries. The earliest recorded Celtic civilization dates from around 700 BC. However, it is also possible that as early as 2000 BC communities with Celtic origins already existed in both Britain and Ireland.

Following the Roman occupation of Britain, from AD 43, only the relatively safer havens of what are now known as the Celtic countries - Cornwall (south-west England), Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Brittany (north-west France) remained. Despite fierce Viking invasions of all these areas, mainly during the ninth and tenth centuries, the Celtic spirit remained alive, and these countries are now the present-day focus for the revival of Celtic culture. Ireland, being more remote and thus relatively undisturbed, became the cornerstone of Celtic Christianity from the fourth century onwards.

Though there has been steady but quietly unbroken continuity of the Celtic art form in all the Celtic countries, especially Ireland and Wales, it is really only since the turn of the last century that the Celtic art revival has proceeded with vigor. Today it is ever on the increase. There are artists and craftspeople working in almost every medium, utilizing Celtic designs. The intrinsic beauty of these patterns is so strong that it is very easy to see why the art form has become so well loved.

Celtic art displays a richness of color, intricacy and symbolism to equal that of any of the world's finest styles of art. The seven created beings of the Celtic world - plant, insect, fish, reptile, bird, mammal and man are all featured in the artwork. But because the copying or portrayal of the works of the creator was forbidden, the artist's representation of natural creatures is highly stylized and abstracted; arms, legs hair and beard are often intertwined in intricate patterns.

Like their pagan gods and spirits, the Druids themselves are said to have practiced shape-shifting, or changing of form, so it is not unusual to find their gods portrayed as having bird or animal servants, or even bird or animal body parts. This same characteristic was later incorporated into the Christian Gospels, where the evangelists are given both animal and human forms.

There are four recurring designs to be found in traditional Celtic art -

knotwork patterns

The interlaced knotwork patterns with their unbroken lines, symbolize the process of man's eternal spiritual growth, the intertwining of the eternal thread of life.

spirals

The spiral is the natural form of growth, and in every culture past and present has become a symbol of eternal life. The whorls represent the continuous creation and dissolution of the world; the passages between the spirals symbolize the divisions between life, death and rebirth.

key patterns

Key patterns are really spirals in straight lines. When connected, they become a processional path, leading through a complex maze to the sacred center x where Heaven and Earth are joined. Labyrinths, or mazes, were primarily religious objects and were incorporated into the Christian church.

zoomorphic ornaments