Irish Carved Ornament: from Monuments of the Christian Period - Paperback

Celtic ornamentation is remarkable for the apparent ease with which it could be adapted to embellish the stone monuments, the vellum manuscripts and the silver and fold of chalices, shrines and croziers of the early Christian period: a period that produced the world-famous masterpieces like The Book of Kells, the Ardagh Chalice and the Cross of Cong. In this classic work, Henry Crawford describes in detail the ornamentation of stone monuments of this period, reproducing in the book some 300 illustrations of this form of decoration, which had its origin in the Celtic, pre-Christian period. His photographic 'restorations' of badly weathered stones are quite unique.

This is a handbook for archaeologists, craftsmen and historians.