Contemporary Celtic Motifs

Contemporary Celtic Motifs
By Alex Sherman
Published by Batsford
ISBN: 978-0-7134-9061-9
Price: £16.99
Reviewed by Stacey Harvey Brown

Sherman has an obvious love of creating designs with a modern twist, using the foundations of traditional Celtic knotwork, but with a fluidity and exuberance that leaps off the page. The book includes chapters on animal forms, circles, smaller-scale picture motifs, a freer more modern style, which Sherman calls Urban Style, freehand motifs, and borders, along with templates for some of the more unusual shapes that have been used. Also included are more written and drawn details on some of the intricate and complex motifs, which is useful to help construct larger designs. The accompanying CD has all the printed images in digital format.

Some of the larger designs looked too busy on the page, as they had been designed to work on a much larger scale but this is really a quibble. This is an inspiring book for those who love the complexity and fluidity of both Celtic designs and Art Nouveau.