Style combination · Pairs well

Armenian Manuscript Illumination × Celtic Revival Illumination

Both build letters out of animals and interlace; set a bird-letter initial beside a knotted Celtic one to compare an initial made of whole birds with one made of interlaced beasts.

From the research on Armenian Manuscript Illumination

Mix them and make something Armenian Manuscript Illumination Celtic Revival Illumination

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Celtic Revival Illumination, their arrangement from Armenian Manuscript Illumination, the finish from Celtic Revival Illumination. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Armenian Manuscript Illumination Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering

Type from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Brush & pen calligraphy
Ornamented display
Colour from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Jewel & metallic
Full polychrome
Form from Celtic Revival Illumination: Geometric tessellation
Abundant decoration
Composition from Armenian Manuscript Illumination: Framed panels
Central symmetry
Surface from Celtic Revival Illumination: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Armenian Manuscript Illumination

Grace

Uncial Antiqua, standing in for Erkatagir ('iron letters'), the uncial held to be Mesrop Mashtots's original form of the alphabet of 405, used for manuscript text from the 5th to the 13th century and still preferred for inscriptions

Text · Celtic Revival Illumination

Ornament and lettering of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, modelled on Insular gospel books such as Kells and on carved stone crosses. Text sits in closed, symmetrical frames of knotwork, key pattern, spirals and interlaced beasts, its letters drawn in insular forms, knotted into the ornament or set in Gaelic type, in deep flat colours on vellum or paper. Its makers carried it from illuminated books and addresses to a nationalist memorial book, Gaelic League mastheads, magazines, the Irish Free State's first stamps and Liberty silver.

EB Garamond; Celtic Revival Illumination used Hand-drawn lettering after the majuscule and half-uncial of the Insular manuscripts, drawn into the ornament and Archibald Knox's interlaced Celtic lettering, drawn so densely into the ornament that it must be studied to be read

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Armenian Manuscript Illumination, with a counter-accent from Celtic Revival Illumination. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Armenian Manuscript Illumination Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering

#f0e6cf ground · 36%
#2b1e16 ink · 14%
#c0392b accent · 18%
#b8902e accent · 14%
#1e3a8f accent · 10%
#2e7d5b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e6cf;
  --ink: #2b1e16;
  --accent-1: #c0392b;
  --accent-2: #b8902e;
  --accent-3: #1e3a8f;
  --accent-4: #2e7d5b;
  --font-display: "Uncial Antiqua", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

Armenian Manuscript Illumination: These are Gospel books, lectionaries and Bibles of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and their crosses, evangelist symbols, portraits of Christ and the saints and holy names keep their sacred meaning; do not use them as texture, logos or decoration on trivial products. Armenian letter art, including ornamental letters made of birds, animals and people, is living heritage (UNESCO Representative List, 2019) practised by calligraphers, carpet weavers, embroiderers and jewellers, so commission or collaborate with Armenian artists rather than lifting motifs, and have any Armenian text written or checked by a fluent reader instead of assembling letters as pseudo-script. Manuscripts were seized, scattered or lost in the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Zeyt'un Gospels among them (its canon tables were removed and sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1994; a 2015 agreement acknowledged the Armenian Church as their owner while the leaves stayed at the Getty), and several of the scriptoria (Vaspurakan, Cilicia) now lie outside Armenia: credit the work as Armenian, naming its Byzantine models, and the Syriac ones of the earliest books, where they matter, and do not fold it into a generic 'Byzantine' or 'Oriental' style.

Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering: Its models are Christian gospel books and crosses, and many of its emblems are national and partisan: Leabhar na hAiséirghe is a memorial to the republican dead of 1916–23, including the Civil War, and the Celtic Cross stamp was adapted from a Sinn Féin label, so do not use these as neutral 'Irish' decoration where nationalist imagery is contested, as in Northern Ireland. The 1922 Map of Ireland stamp left out the border, and some in Northern Ireland and Britain read it as a claim to the northern counties, so an undivided map of the island is itself a political statement. A square cross interlocked with or surrounded by a circle is a widespread white-supremacist symbol, while the traditional Celtic cross has a long vertical shaft, so draw the cross accordingly and check knotwork marks in context. 'Celtic' and 'Irish' are not exclusive labels for Kells-type ornament: Insular art was made across Britain and Ireland, the Lindisfarne Gospels in Northumbria, and Kells itself possibly begun on Iona. George Bain died in 1968, so his drawings remain in copyright in the UK until the end of 2038: construct new knots by his methods rather than tracing his plates, and have any Irish or Scottish Gaelic text checked by a fluent reader.