The drawing shows the culmination of Bain’s studies of one of the crosses on the Pictish stone from Ulbster. The interlaced knotwork design clearly fascinated him. Some ten years later he created a set of posters that unpick and then re-use the pattern.

Here, Bain emphasises the single continuous line of knotwork in the design. He sets out six stages for building up the fill of the cross, which is made up of five interconnected square units. At the bottom left Bain also shows how to create a more complex single square design. Its self-contained interlace is derived from the arms of the cross. It is remarkable how much ‘instruction’ he built into a single drawing.

This illustration is one of four that introduce how to draw knotwork panels in Bain’s Celtic Art, Methods of Construction. Although he prepared it in 1937, this drawing wasn’t published until 1951.

This small item is from a fascinating period of George Bain’s artistic output. He set up his College of Celtic Cultures in 1946. A year or so later, he was approached by the Kidderminster carpet firm of Quayle & Tranter to produce some Celtic designs for rugs and carpets. Bain agreed and he was taken on as a special adviser and consultant to the company. Quayle and Tranter gained the right to use the ‘guarantee of authenticity’ mark of the College for every Celtic rug design they produced. It’s the upper part of this label. 

The most successful and widely sold rug was the Hunting Rug. Eventually it was produced in two different colourways and sizes. This label, designed by Bain, comes from the back of one such rug. It perfectly reflects the very successful collaboration that he had with the company over a number of years.

Bain was always looking for connections between the insular art of the British Isles and artistic styles beyond our shores. He knew that elements could be seen in the designs used in Roman, Greek and earlier classical worlds. Here, he seeks to connect the study of a Pictish horse’s head with one from Knossos, Mycenae (in today’s Crete). There are around 2,000 years between the two.

Both are incised into smooth, flat surfaces. One is on a large granite slab, the other a small clay tablet. Both horses seem to have braided manes. Only the horse from Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, has a defined jaw line and muscles. The curved lines enabled the Pictish craftsman to show the horse’s form.

Bain comments that in Celtic art ‘the leg-joints and rib-forms of the animals in ornamental rendering have spiral terminal treatments’. Here, as on other Pictish stones, these spirals are simple scrolls. In the Book of Kells scrolls are also used. Some therefore wonder if a Pictish scribe might have had a hand in the creation of the great book.  Bain was very drawn to the Inverurie slab and used adaptations of the Pictish horse in other designs of his.

Bain tried to reproduce a curved interlace design in this knitting chart on squared paper. Close up, it’s hard to see the blocks as interlaced strands. But from a distance, or when knitted with a thin enough wool, the pattern emerges.

Creating this design, he probably starts with two rows of equally spaced dots. Then, he breaks and joins the lines between them. This creates the interlacing strands. Bain describes this at the left of the second row in illustration 10 of his Elementary Knotwork booklet. The design can extend into infinity from both ends of the paper.

Bain made this chart for Peggy MacDonald when he lived in Drumnadrochit, after retiring from teaching. He encouraged local people to make use of Celtic art in modern craftsmanship. Whether Peggy used this chart to knit a border or all-over design is not known. However, there is a photograph of some of his students wearing knitwear that was made using his charts.

The intricate design on this white bowl was drawn and painted by Jessie, George Bain’s wife. She has signed it underneath as JB 1952. We presume that DR stands for Drumnadrochit, by Loch Ness, where they lived for six years. But sometime that year they moved to Staffordshire, to live with one of their daughters, Chirsty.

The design features pairs of birds with necks and tail feathers intertwined, repeated three times. The two-stranded necks give a length that allows them to turn back, so their beaks can grasp their bodies. The taloned feet hang down, partially intertwined with their sinuous tail feathers. Altogether there is a rotational symmetry to the piece. The sloping sides and circular shape makes this quite a complex design to calculate, but it is beautifully executed.

The limited palette of colours helps to make the individual birds stand out clearly. One of each pair is mostly outlined in orange and cross-hatched in yellow. The other is lined in black with a bright green fill. But the tail feathers of each are in the opposing colours. This is quite a surprise and shows considerable thought.

Bain explored how early medieval artists used stylised birds, animals and humans in his book Methods of Construction. He copies them from illustrated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels and Book of Kells. Examples are also shown from metalwork, like the Tara brooch.

The birds always have very long necks that are often interlaced with the tail feathers or neck of another. Their beaks may grasp neck, tail feather or foot of an adjacent bird. Or the head may turn back so that it can clutch its own body. This is what is painted here in a fairly simple red and blue design, with spots along necks and tail feathers.

Jessie Bain, George Bain’s wife, has painted the interlaced birds onto a plain glazed bowl, signing it JB on its base. She probably decorated it while they were living in Drumnadrochit. Having retired to the village, this is where Bain wanted to set up a College of Celtic Cultures. He hoped to encourage others to create their own designs on objects and revitalise Scottish artistic craftsmanship.

In his book Celtic Art, Methods of Construction, George Bain describes how to draw key patterns like this. In his diagrams he always uses square graph paper turned diagonally. But this is drawn without turning the paper through 45 degrees. This is so it can be used as a knitting chart.

The geometric designs can be easily made as knitting stitches, provided a fine gauge yarn is used. For thicker yarns, like double knitting, such a pattern is best worked out on rectangular graph paper. This is because knitting stitches are actually wider than they are high. On very small stitches this is barely noticeable. But the larger the stitches the more the pattern will be distorted if it is created on ordinary graph paper.

Bain wanted to encourage his pupils to create their own versions of insular art designs and apply them to different objects. Knitting was one of his own ideas. He hoped such developments would lead to a revival of Celtic art in Scotland.

In this design Bain uses the five-square cross from the Pictish Ulbster Stone to build an all over pattern. Specific crosses are highlighted using shading to add a layer of complexity. It is quite mesmerising.

There are a number of drawings of the cross in the George Bain Collection. He was clearly fascinated by this particular use of knotwork. And he compared it with numerous other Pictish examples in his Methods of Construction.

The note (‘No 14’ bottom left) probably means that this drawing was a design for a rug or carpet. He submitted over 20 ideas to the manufacturers Quayle and Tranter of Kidderminster. They had commissioned him to produce a range of patterns, some of which were chosen for commercial production. As far as we know this design was not taken any further.

This beautiful circular place mat contains an intricate embroidered interlace design. Brightly coloured silk and wool threads totally cover the backing fabric. This has produced a sturdy piece, so was probably used under a teapot or plant.

The central single strand design has been worked in light and dark greens. The more complicated outer circle of knotwork is stitched in yellow and fawn. It contains loops which link the two blanket-stitched designs together. Even the spaces between the strands have been filled in with a variety of textured stitches, including satin stitch and French knots.

This scallop-shaped piece may originally have been used as a small place mat. It seems that it was carefully cut to shape after completing the embroidery.

The colourful interlace design is made up of two interlaced strands. Both are outlined in blanket stitch and then infilled with feather stitch. The pale green in one of the ribbons provides a subtle contrast to the other strand.

Drawing spirals can be surprisingly complex. In this drawing Bain explores how to create them in one, two, three, four or five-parts. He then elaborates on the basic design, joining spirals together by using what he calls his ‘C-method’. These two designs are not repeated in any of Bain’s publications. But he does include llustrations of the C-method in other ways, based on an example from the Book of Kells.

George Bain’s passion was to bring together methods for drawing Celtic interlaced art that anyone could use. He clearly hoped to publish his work, the illustrations in this series beiing dated 1935. But it wasn’t until 1945 that his first booklets appeared.  One of them focussed on spirals, but it didn’t use this illustration. Nor did his 1952 book Celtic Art, Methods of Construction.

Celtic art designs were used when decorating various early medieval items.  George Bain studied photographs and drawings of examples from Britain and Ireland. He wanted to draw them accurately. These complex spirals are from various objects. The designs are in the Northumbrian Book of Durrow, Irish church silverware and Pictish sculpture.

At top left, Bain shows a portion of a border of spirals from underneath the base of the Ardagh Chalice. He uses this border in the chapter on spirals in Methods of Construction. But there he adapts the design from curving to linear. This allows him to compare it directly with panels from the Book of Kells.

Exact copies of the other examples drawn here are not used in his book. However, he does emphasise the importance of spirals in Pictish sculpture. He draws those at at Tarbat (Portmahomack), Aberlemno and Shandwick (Easter Ross).

TCD MS57 folio 3v Trinity College Dublin (digital link MS57_014)