George Bain made this wooden hand-painted bangle for his beloved wife Jessie. It is made in two parts and each is painted with a different design. A hinge and clasp join the two together so that the bangle is easy to put on and off.

One half is decorated with a series of triple spirals (known as triskeles) in sherbet shades of pale blue, yellow and orange. The shapes roll like waves from clasp to hinge. The other half is painted in deeper colours. Two mirror-image interlaced knotwork designs meet in a red and white central knot. Accents of orange on both halves of the bangle link the designs together.

These buttons were carved by either George Bain himself, or one of his pupils. They are just right for fastening a jacket or heavy cardigan. They add a distinct flair to an everyday item of clothing.

Made entirely of wood, it looks like each was originally a small, smooth ball. The loop to sew on the button must have been carved out first. We think this because the carver wouldn’t want to use time on the complex decoration and then accidentally break the loop while creating it.

A very steady hand and a fine, sharp instrument then carved the same design onto the buttons. Carving the knotwork into such tiny, round objects requires great skill. The pattern of two smooth, interlaced strands is very like that used in Pictish carvings. Bain unpicked similar circular knotwork on the Shandwick and Hilton of Cadboll stones. These buttons are miniature versions of that craftsmanship.

See Bain’s Celtic Art, Methods of Construction page 51 Plates 13 & 14

It seems likely that Bain’s ‘unknown artist of the Book of Lindisfarne’ would be extremely surprised if he was able to see this greetings card. He created this design as part of the highly decorated, opening words at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. Here, the scribe’s design now covers the surface of a large twin-handled gold trophy.

On the page in the Lindisfarne Gospels the twisting interlaced birds fill the awkward space to the left of the long descender of the letter q. A linear series of birds then form the lower and right side borders to the page. Bain takes the main panel, creates a mirror image, and puts the two together. He then adds the gold border with its spirals and bird’s heads to create this trophy-like design.

Did the trophy-like shape suggest early metalwork to Bain as he designed the card? His upside-down birds heads that support the handles certainly look reminiscent of the backward-looking birds’ heads on each side of the bosses on the Sutton Hoo belt-buckle.

See: The Lindisfarne Gospels Cotton MS Nero D IV folio 139r, British Library

George Bain’s school pupils report that his classroom walls were lined with large posters. They were of Celtic designs and their construction methods. After he retired he continued to create posters for his adult students. We think this is one of them.

Bain shows a method for drawing a complicated interlaced knotwork border from a ‘carpet’ page of the Book of Durrow. He starts with the first stage at the bottom of the page. Then he builds up to the complete border at the top. Immediately below the finished border he shows a range of different effects that can be achieved using the same basic method.

The poster is drawn with ballpoint pens, which were introduced after World War II. Bain used them to draw precise lines in a variety of colours without danger of smudging. Look closely at the pink colouring of the finished border. You can see that he must have spent some time carefully drawing rings and squiggles in red ballpoint pen to achieve this effect.

See: The Book of Durrow, TCD MS57, folio 125v, Trinity College Dublin

This embroidered place mat was one of the first objects to be given to Groam House Museum by George Bain’s son and grand-children. He probably created the design and then one of his students embroidered it in brightly coloured threads on white linen.

Six birds make up the border of the mat. Pairs of vivid birds face each other. Their necks interlace so that each rests its bright yellow beak back on its own wing, as if roosting. Their long tail feathers interlace with those of the next pair. They surround a complex, circular knotwork design in gold and blue, with its central six-pointed star highlighted in red and yellow.

The embroiderer has used a variety of stitches to create different textures. There are back, stem and chain stitches, herringbone and close blanket stitches, french knots, fly and feather stitches. The use of such a range of stitches results in a surprisingly textured piece.

The shapes of the birds are all typical of those in illuminated manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Kells. The central knotwork design is a reminder of a design on the Pictish Hilton of Cadboll cross slab.

George Bain drew large posters like this to illustrate his Celtic art classes and lectures after he retired. He’d made simpler posters for his art students in Kirkcaldy. They remember his classroom being decorated with numerous large-scale designs.

Bain has increased the size of both illustrations around 20 times. He carefully records this alongside his drawings. Magnifying the size of the design allowed him to understand their complexity. It also meant he could see the scribe’s inconsistencies. At the bottom right corner Bain notes that one of the four figures has a white, rather than a blue thigh in the original. He corrects this in his version, interpreting the blue as trousers.

These two small panels are from different pages in the Book of Kells. We don’t know if Bain ever travelled to Dublin to see the original. But we do know that he worked from Sullivan’s Book of Kells publication. The 2nd edition, published in 1920, had 24 colour plates from various parts of the manuscript.

See Book of Kells TCD MS58 folio 130r Trinity College Dublin (detail top left) and
TCD MS58 folio 27v Trinity College Dublin (detail bottom right)

This amazing design was drawn by George Bain and embroidered by a pupil in a Kirkcaldy High School sewing class. It must have taken hours of work.

There are four sets of two, slightly different, kneeling men facing each other. Their beards join each pair together in a single interlaced strand. Their long hair links each man to one in another pair – it’s incredibly complicated. Bain took his inspiration from the Book of Kells. Within the intricate Chi Rho page of the Gospel of St Matthew there are two pairs of beard-pullers (also known as beard sages) .

We can’t see how the design was transferred to the cloth for the embroiderer. Perhaps a soft pencil was used and it has washed away. But two shades of blue thread have been used, apparently randomly except for the ankle spots. Maybe the embroiderer ran out of the lighter blue thread before completing the work. The outlines of the men are in stem stitch and the background is fly stitch. Satin stitch marks most of the ankles.

The narrow border is also very accomplished, with its repeated motif of three-coil spirals (triskeles) and their elegant trumpet ends.

See: The Book of Kells, TCD MS58 folio 34r, Trinity College Dublin (detail centre right)

This brightly painted wooden bowl sits centre stage on a stand at a 1950s exhibition. It is surrounded by other Celtic design objects made by George Bain’s students. We don’t know exactly who designed or painted this bowl but it does show Bain’s philosophy of Celtic art in action.

A ring of brightly coloured birds march round the outer border of the bowl. The design is inspired by a detail on a page in the Lindisfarne Gospels. As with his other research, Bain drew out the birds from a modern illustration. He then worked out how to construct these birds with their interlacing of necks and tail feathers. He published this in his ‘Methods of Construction’.

On the inside of the bowl is an all-over open knotwork pattern. On a rich, deep blue background, the gold, blue and crimson colours repeat some of those of the birds. The two ribbons tie themselves into loose pretzel shapes around the rim. They then swirl and loop across themselves and each other to the centre of the bowl and back again. Bain shows how to create this design from first principles in the ‘Elementary Knotwork Borders’ section of his book.

The drawing on this multi-coloured card is adapted from a detail on the Chi Rho page in the Book of Kells. Bain studied this page from St Matthew’s Gospel in great detail. It features the first three letters of Christ’s name when written in Greek ( a curved X, the letter chi = Ch; P, the letter rho = R; and I, the letter iota = I). This abbreviation is often seen in early medieval illuminated manuscripts. No wonder Bain chose the angels from this specific page for his Christmas card.

He has redrawn the pair of flying angels on the left edge of the ornate letter X that almost fills the Kells illumination. Around the angels, with their rolled scrolls of the word of God, Bain has added his own border. It is decorated with interlace and spirals.  He has filled the upper part of the card with very loose, stippled strands on a background of pale and dark blue dots. The stippling must have been very time-consuming and repetitive. Perhaps this is why Bain, unusually, hasn’t made it clear how these knotwork strands are interlaced.

Bain designed a number of greetings cards for commercial printing. We’re not sure when he did so, but it was probably while he lived near Inverness.

See: The Book of Kells, TCD MS58, folio 34r, Trinity College Dublin (detail centre left)

This fabulous embroidered cloth came from the home of George Bain. He probably created the design for one of his students to embroider. The inspiration comes from the various birds in the Lindisfarne Gospels and Book of Kells.

Bain has drawn four vibrantly coloured, stylised birds standing tail to tail. Each head drops down into the centre, its orange beak biting its own brown leg. The long necks and crests are set on a black stitched background. Forming an interlaced design, they connect each pair of birds with its neighbour. The clawed feet of the birds, dropping from their brown speckled bellies, also criss-cross in the centre.

The needlework is extremely skilful, with stitches including satin, herringbone and close blanket styles. The birds’ bodies and wings are worked in 9 colours of thread. The pattern includes spirals, dots, zigzags, strands and mosaics of colour. The blanket stitches of the primary feathers form scallop and chevron contours. This table cloth must be one of the most accomplished pieces in the collection.

See: Bain’s Celtic Art, Methods of Construction pages 109-111 Plates 1-5

Here, Bain collects examples of birds from across early medieval insular art onto poor quality, thin paper. They are taken from manuscripts, incised or sculpted stone slabs and metalwork. All are from Scotland, Ireland or Northumbria. His notes show he’s working out comparisons across art forms and countries. This approach became key to his presentation of Celtic art.

HIs notes open a window on his studies. A looping arrow, with the command ‘compare’, links birds from the Book of Kells and a Pictish sculpted stone from Meigle in Perthshire. A remark on the left side compares a panel in the Psalter of St John with ones in the Gospels of MacDurnan. Bain’s wonder at the intricacy of insular art is literally underlined in his annotation bottom right. With his drawing of a detail from the Tara brooch he records ‘much enlarged’.

George Bain’s research eventually resulted in his book Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction. It was published by William Macllellan, the Glasgow publisher, in 1951. The book brings together his successful series of six booklets on the different Celtic art styles, first printed in 1944.

The use of a single, continuous line or strand in Pictish interlace and knotwork was of great interest to George Bain. He saw it as symbolic of Eternity. Bain was keen to stress this by showing the main methods used to achieve it.

In this poster he shows how interlace can be drawn with equal or unequal numbers of edge ‘turns’. Equal numbers produce a specific size of panel or border. Bain shows this in his drawing of part of a mosaic at Chedworth Roman villa, in England. It has 5 turns along both short edges. An unequal number of turns makes an infinite length of panel or border interlace. Bain draws this next to the Chedworth panel. The top edge has 6 turns but the bottom only has 5.

Bain used reference books to study interlaced panels and borders on Roman mosaics in England and abroad. Roman mosaics were designed long before Pictish use of the design. It is not clear from this drawing if the example of a mistake at Itchen Abbas refers to the original pavement. Perhaps the error is in the drawing of it in the Quennell book that he references. In any event in his own re-drawing Bain resolves the mistake.