Celtic knot

These designs found their way into early Christian manuscripts and artwork with the addition of depictions from life, such as animals, plants and even humans.

A fragment of a Gospel Book, now in the Durham Cathedral library and created in northern Britain in the 7th century, contains the earliest example of true knotted designs in the Celtic manner.

Examples of plait work (a woven, unbroken[clarification needed] cord design) predate knotwork designs in several cultures around the world,[2] but the broken and reconnected[clarification needed] plait work that is characteristic of true knotwork began in northern Italy and southern Gaul and spread to Ireland by the 7th century.

[3] The style is most commonly associated with the Celtic lands, but it was also practiced extensively in England and was exported to Europe by Irish and Northumbrian monastic activities on the continent.

J. Romilly Allen has identified "eight elementary knots which form the basis of nearly all the interlaced patterns in Celtic decorative art".