Insular Art Forms: Their Essence and Construction

by Robert Stevick

Dr. Robert Stevick’s Insular Art Forms: Their Essence and Construction emerges as the most innovative work of his long and illustrious career. Building on years of research into medieval manuscript design and construction, Stevick has produced a masterpiece examining the ingenious ways in which insular scribes used geometry and mathematics to produce complex and beautiful designs. In addition to a detailed academic description of these processes, Stevick provides videos clearly illustrating the methods he describes, and materials for practical hands-on recreation of their methods. Insular Art Forms is the only guide that offers both a true scholarly study of these methods and the means for modern readers to reproduce them.

182 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Sivan Amar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly meticulous in its mathematical research and comprehension, with excellent figures and examples given throughout. My two issues are only thus: I am no mathematician to either confirm or argue the author’s points, so I cannot provide much in the way of feedback here; and, more glaringly, the author does not posit any of his findings within the religious historical context in which these Insular and English illuminated manuscripts and sculptured crosses were made. Its fascinating that the artworks can be measured and copied via math equations, but the bigger question for me is WHY these artisans (who were monks or employed by them) would create forms in this manner? What is the religious, spiritual, cultural or belief structure behind these stylistic choices? There’s no mention of religious practices, apotropaism, ancient Celtic knot-work systems, or any of these discussions to even provide background information in which to couch the author’s findings and provide a greater global context to the pattern work explained here via equations.
That said, this is a reference book and worth a read to supplement our understandings of these wonderful works, so would recommend!