Spirals trumpeting
Object number: ROMGH.1998.22
Type: Poster
Material: Ballpoint pen, Paper, Pencil
Width: 50cm | Height: 64cm
Production date: 1948 - 1968
This design is from a page in the Book of Durrow, created around 650-670AD. The manuscript is a superb, early medieval illuminated book of gospels, possibly made in Northumbria. Its opening carpet page has a border of interlaced knotwork. This bounds a central panel that focuses on three pairs of discs of spirals.
Each pair is different, with two, three, four or seven three-stranded spirals joining together. Here, Bain has interpreted one of the seven spiral discs. Each strand meets that of another strand as an open, trumpet-like, form. Long, thin lenses fill the intervening spaces.
It is a highly refined, exquisite design that Bain explores in his book Methods of Construction. There, he compares it to the seven spiral disc on the Pictish Aberlemno cross-slab.
See Bain's Celtic Art, Methods of Construction page 64 Plate 7 and page 60 Plate M
Author: Jill Harden
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