Albion Celtic Design

24/12/2025

This is the second pattern (designed by myself) from a sketch book of knots .. Both this design and the previous one are continuous - ie not in several interwoven sections. Trace around and follow it for yourselves. Take a little time to look at the patterns and note your spontaneous observations...

24/12/2025

I was looking through one of my sketch books of knot designs just now and came across two interesting patterns. This is the first... It forms a square panel... I find designing knot patterns into squares particularly interesting as you often have to adapt the knot to make it continuous. Discovery and ingenuity often come into play... Knotwork patterns are easier to design in rectangular shapes because the difference between the length and breadth creates an off-set (but hopefully not an upset!)...

15/05/2025

There is a very interesting and fundamental aspect to ancient patterns and pattern-making, often overlooked… From the primal dot and simple zig-zag through the interwound spiral, weaving tendril and intricate knot… the circle, triangle and square… the forms of all patterns are, primarily, mirrors of nature. Not just to be labelled as ‘tradition‘ or as mere symbols, the play-things of the intellect… Patterns are a language, at once artistic, philosophical, mathematical, scientific, relating to all fields of human activity, showing that everything is in a fundamental relationship. Why then, for example, aren’t scientists, philosophers or even poets actively and ordinarily studying these patterns? It may give them insight into their own explorations… To see and understand one thing we sometimes have to come away and look at everything else around it! Relationship! There is an ‘art to everything’ but only if we are in the foundation of life… The ways of nature are found in the primal patterns of knots, tessellations, meanders, labyrinths, spirals... Time for subjects and peoples to confer, exchange and find each other again.

13/05/2024

If I said: ‘The key to proportion is measure‘, would you know what I mean? Measure?! Have you ever considered what it is? We are all educated to measurement in some way or other. Perhaps we take it for granted without knowing what the underlying principles are and how they ‘work'? Measure can be weight, hot and cold, number, what is good and many other things... Judgement too, works through a sense of proportion and 'rightness'... Where does our sense of rightness and proportion come from I wonder? In pattern-making we are looking at measurement of space.. Measure works through relationship. This will become clear as we go on... To begin we must have a good question: What is the relationship between proportion and measure? Also, in geometry and the age-old tradition of pattern-making: what is a unit of measurement and what does it represent and do? Let's do something practical to find out. Take a piece of paper and a pencil and somewhere in a clear space make a dot. A little distance away to the right, make another dot. We have now created our own measure! Have some fun and give it a name! Now go back to the first dot and this time, using our measure, make another equally spaced one below it. Take the second dot and do the same underneath. We have now formed a square of four dots. Is this too simple?! If we now add more equi-spaced dots above, below, to left and right we can soon build a bigger square made up of four-by-four dots. Can you see that measure is based on the square? From this we can also measure and plot diagonally... but that’s another chapter. Finally, if we now put a (larger) and softer dot in the centre of each dotted square, we have made a master grid from which almost endless patterns can be created. It is no accident that in pattern-making the dot and the dotted square grid provide the field and the seeds for growing many, many patterns! I have experimented a lot with these dotted square grids and have found that most patterns (knots, key patterns and labyrinths for example) can be generated using them. Dots are also easy to plot and provide a minimal guide for patterns without getting in the way - in fact they often naturally recede as the patterns grow stronger and clearer! And what of proportion? Well, proportion is there all along. Any pattern or it’s parts generated through the dotted square grid will be in a natural underlying proportion. How ever great or small our basic measure or unit, a square is always a square… This universal underlying relationship and proportion is a fascinating and often overlooked thing... Simple things often are as they hide endless complexity!

07/04/2024

Hello everyone... anyone?! If you are really interested in Celtic Patterns (and also, come to mention it: labyrinths) I am one of very, very few who can teach / show this art-form clearly and at all levels. I have gone into the foundations and from there developed original and innovative work (none of which is visible on this site!). if you would like tuition or a presentation, (or something similar?) please contact me...

03/08/2023

Listen...

Composer: Original Classical music for string orchestra, various ensembles and solo instruments (inc. piano). Original Folk music. Occasional forays into rock and jazz... (as well as some tudor-like a

27/05/2022

Ripples, waves, tides, currents, flows, oscillations, scintillations, spirallings, intertwinings, transformations, interactions, radiations, reflections, symmetries, formations, creations, destructions, changes, eternities, mysteries... all are (or can be!) described using the rich language of Celtic patterns. The designs of nature are encapsulated in this powerfully, poetic and musical artform. Poetry does not give explanations or definitions. Life is not fixed but is change, so, in one sense, there is no meaning - unless, perhaps, by 'meaning' our art is an instant depiction - a mirror's flash! A smile grows but then naturally dies. As do suns! Celtic patterns reflect what is essential and fundamental in life. A knot dances and is woven from seeds; each equally-spaced dot at once a point of potential, an axis of rotation. The interlacing and alternations of the knot are at once the polarities and the bindings that bring about forms that are themselves undergoing continual change. Change is at the heart of this art.

03/05/2022

A simple knotwork panel design created using a square dotted grid. © M. Terrett 2022. This grid is an ancient (and ever-present) key to producing design patterns that are at once geometric and proportional.

23/04/2022

Sometimes if we go back to the basics (and also consider what the word 'basic' means) we can discover something both simple and profound. One of the original methods of drawing out knotwork is a square grid made up of equally-spaced dots with a dot in the centre of each. The knotted path then goes around the central dots... Recently, when I was pencilling in the knotwork band of a new design it suddenly occurred to me that I was working with both the square and the circle - in fact a fusion of both. This is interesting for a number of reasons which I will unfold after dinner!

It's been a few days since I posted the above. That was a long lunch ago! Let's pick up from where we left off... To sum up: when we draw out knots using (the probably ancient method of) a dotted square grid, we are simultaneously working with the square and the circle. Why? The lines we use to describe the knot are either made up of straight lines and right angles or arcs which are part-circles. Next time you draw out a knot see if you can see and discover this - It's knot difficult! There is also some interesting things related to this combined use of square and circle. Traditionally, the square is 'earth' and the circle 'heaven'. That suggests that designing and recreating knotwork reflects a fusion of the two - not a con-fusion! Heaven and earth are harmonised I think this fusion of square and circle also relates to the earth as a sphere and our 'flattened' experience on its surface and the development of the four cardinal directions - 'the four corners of the earth' - for how else can a sphere (and circle) have corners! There's also something else I would like to mention... again, something obvious but profound... When we lay down or mark out a square grid of equally spaced dots, we are creating measure. All patterns created on this grid are related directly to this measure. This unit of measure does not need to have a name or conform to fixed standards such as inches or centimetres. If you think about it, measurements of this kind are all made up of equally spaced units based on the square. We are, in fact, 'measuring out the earth' using the sides of a square. It's all relative. You can choose a small distance between dots or a greater distance - either way the patterns and proportions will be the same. So: measure is related to proportion. When we create a complete pattern using different shapes and sizes of knot - all connected to one another - their sizes and shapes are always in proportion. This shows harmony related to an underlying common ground - the scattered but ordered field of dots we use as our beginning and our guide. If heaven be in a wild flower and the power of a star is in a seed then profundity is in patterns that originate in the dot...