Celtic Silver Ring, Celtic Knot Ring Wedding Band
Q.I'm getting married this summer and I'm rather interested in acquiring a Celtic Knot Ring for my wedding band. Now I have browsed many stores and websites and they have given me wonderful ideas however I'm unable to find any concrete information on what they all mean. Now I know that most of the designs are custom made however I know they have some rather interesting history behind them. So does anyone know of a good website where I can get that kind of info????? A mini biography of each ring I guess you could call it. I'm currently looking at a ring called "Celtic Glasgow Knot Band"..... Any info would be appreciated.
A.Simple explanation of Celtic knots is : A single line, unbroken, that represents the circle of life according to Celtic mythology. From there unless it is a copy of historic artwork, its up to each artists vision. Have you seen my site ? As a maker of a wide range of 'celtic' knotwork ring designs, I probably shouldn't do this, but I am about to debunk a lot of the mystique that people have imagined for these designs: First of all, it wasn't the Celts who started the design style. The Celts as a people existed in pre-Roman times and were very good at making jewellery using twisted and woven metal wires. They were fond of spirals and mazes ( the 'Greek' key pattern ), of designs based on animals, and did produce some beautiful art forms with spirals and 'paisley' like designs, but not in the interlaced style we associate with 'celtic' knotwork. This style appears to have originated sometime in the Dark Ages, post-Roman, possibly in the 'Celtic' areas north and west of Romanised Britain - Hibernia (Ireland) or Caledonia, etc., (Scotland). We mainly know of the style and call it 'celtic' because it was associated with the Celtic church monasteries of the 6th - 8th century and beautifully used in the creation of illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. The peoples and artists involved were the Scots (Irish!) and the Picts (Scottish) and inhabitants of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The interlaced knotwork style is not an easy artform either in 2 or 3 dimensions and its 'invention' would not have come easily either to a sculptor of stone or to an artist (who would almost certainly would have been a monk). Drawing kotwork is quite difficult as the 'strands' weave alternately over and under other loops of the same, or another, strand to form one or more (usually) endless loops. Sometimes, animal forms are tortuously formed into knotwork (zoomorphs), or letter shapes are created in knot form. Of course the basic style of braiding would have been very familiar in that it was used for plaiting hair, and possibly by Celtic goldsmiths as an (less durableand less rigid) alternative to 'twisting' wires. It is possible that the interlaced knotwork style of sculptural decoration later developed with hair braiding as inspiration. However the style is definitely post-Roman, and developed by the Celtic church (which the Roman church and St. Augustine did their best to destroy). The interlaced knotwork patterns found in church manuscripts were/are beautiful illuminations designed to infill letters, borders and spaces. It is border-fill patterns that are suitable for use in knotwork style rings, but there is little evidence that they were ever used for rings in mediaeval times and other (existing) historical use on precious metals is very rare. The Vikings seem to have (loosely) adopted the interlaced style in their artwork, though they are much more noted for plundering and destroying that created by the monasteries. But then the style completely disappeared post-Norman conquest. It did not re-emerge until the late 19th/early 20th century loosely incorporated into art-nouveau and in the work of the Arts and Crafts Movement. George Bain is noteworthy for investigating and developing the 'Pictish School' style. It is clear that only a very few of the knotwork border patterns now used for finger rings were original to anglo-saxon ('celtic') times. Some new ones were designed by George Bain and, in recent times, Courtney Davis has become noteworthy for many excellent examples of graphic 'celtic' art. However, the use of 'celtic' knotwork for wedding rings is actually a very modern phenomenon, probably less than 20 years old! The use of individual names for individual knotwork patterns is simply creative marketing by manufacturers (quite understandable because it makes a particular pattern much more desirable to have a 'name' that maybe relates to something or somewhere in the 'celtic' world). There are maybe around six border knotwork patterns original to the Dark ages, to religious manuscripts and carved memorial crosses; one or two may be found in braids and decorative and useful ropework of sailing ship times; some are attributable to George Bain and I have designed a few original ones myself. As to their individual 'meanings', the phrases: 'urban myth' and 'fanciful' come to mind! The symbolism of 'eternity' may be attributed to interlaced knotwork patterns in general, as a knotwork pattern may consist of just a single strand which loops around itself many times to join up and be continuous .... "eternal". You will see various names such as 'The eternal knot', 'The true lovers' knot', ...... Celtic Glasgow Knot Band (sounds quite musical !), ... etc, but applied to individual patterns, these are manufacturers' fancies. A knotwork pattern may consist of one, two, three or four interlaced strands (occasionally six or more in very complex patterns). In a ring, two or three stands may, or may not, reduce to one (trace a few out and you'll understand what I mean); some are a series of woven-in loops. Is a ring that fortuitously has just a single strand in its pattern the only sort that can be symbolically classed as an 'endless' knot or can any endlessly repeating pattern? Is a mass-produced knotwork ring with a plain section at the back acceptable? Or is it all a load of hokum? 'Celtic knotwork' rings can be made in a number of ways: Most are cast in quantity from original models. Most of these are pierced (with lots of holes in) and have a plain section in the back where the size may be adjusted - unless the manufacturer has made a lot of models for different ring sizes so that the pattern may always join up. Very few are individually pierced originals - 'cause that's a hell of a lot of fiddly work (I do a few rings like this; most have around 50 holes and a lot of hand engraving to shape all of the crossovers). Some mass-produced silver rings without piercings are made by photo-etching - dissolving metal around the photographically-applied knotwork pattern to a depth of maybe 0.1 - 0.3 mm. using ferric nitrate etchant - you can't do this on gold! Most of the knotwork rings I make are individually engraved on a CNC engraving machine then hand-assembled and finished, with deep-cut patterns (0.5 mm) that can be individually scaled for different ring widths and finger sizes so the patterns are continuous around the ring. These 30 or so different 'border' knotwork patterns, spirals, keys and zoomorphs can even be shaped to fit accurately with engagement rings and done in any gold, silver or platinum. But this process is a more expensive and very individual (computer-design) option. There are also some braid rings (usually machine-made braid on a solid backing ring) and flat twist rings (2,3,4 or 6 strands) which look similar. They are not strictly knotwork, but are probably truer to the work that the Celts created.
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