Style combination · Pairs well

Bezalel School × Celtic Revival Illumination

Another national illumination of the 1900s–1920s, with hand-drawn national letters, jewel colours and gold inside heavy symmetrical frames; compare how each built a national art from ancient ornament.

From the research on Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering

Mix them and make something Bezalel School Celtic Revival Illumination

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Bezalel School, their arrangement from Bezalel School, 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.

Bezalel School Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering

Type from Celtic Revival Illumination: Hand-lettering
Brush & pen calligraphy
Colour from Bezalel School: Jewel & metallic
Full polychrome
Form from Bezalel School: Abundant decoration
Borders & frames
Composition from Bezalel School: Central symmetry
Framed panels
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 · Celtic Revival Illumination

Daydream

Uncial Antiqua; 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

Text · Bezalel School

The house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E. M. Lilien and given its definitive form by Ze'ev Raban. It joined Jugendstil and Symbolism to Persian, Syrian and Islamic ornament, Yemenite silverwork and ancient Jewish coins to make a Jewish national art: biblical and Zionist scenes in symmetrical, ornament-packed frames, hand-drawn Hebrew letters as decoration, and jewel colours heightened with gold, on books, posters, carpets, metalwork and tiles until the school closed in 1929 (its designs lingered on objects into the 1950s).

Jost; Bezalel School used Bezalel workshop Hebrew display lettering, which combined Arabic-script forms with German Jugendstil writing and Ze'ev Raban's hand-drawn Hebrew letters, rendered in gold at the centre of an illustrated page

The colours

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

Bezalel School Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering

#f0e4c6 ground · 36%
#1d4e89 ink · 14%
#c9a03a accent · 18%
#a8322d accent · 14%
#2f8a8c accent · 10%
#4f5d2f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e4c6;
  --ink: #1d4e89;
  --accent-1: #c9a03a;
  --accent-2: #a8322d;
  --accent-3: #2f8a8c;
  --accent-4: #4f5d2f;
  --font-display: "Uncial Antiqua", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Bezalel School: Bezalel works quote Hebrew scripture and decorate ritual objects: do not crop, distort, mirror or print biblical verses, and above all the names of God, on throwaway items (such pages are customarily buried rather than discarded), and have any Hebrew read by a fluent reader. The style's figures cast Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews, who modelled for its students and worked as its silversmiths and stone carvers, as picturesque biblical types, and its programme was Zionist in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine; credit the artisans, avoid exoticising living communities, and do not present it as a neutral 'Holy Land' or regional style. It also built a Jewish national art in part from Arab and Islamic sources (Persian and Syrian metalwork, Damascene inlay, Moorish pattern, and Hebrew lettering that drew on Arabic script) in a land it shared with Palestinian Arabs, whom, like Yemenite Jews, its artists took as models for biblical figures: name those sources rather than presenting the motifs as purely Jewish, and treat pieces such as 'Come to Palestine' and the Zionist insignia as political documents, not neutral travel imagery.

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.

The two styles

1906–1929 · Middle East & North Africa Bezalel School The house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E. M. Lilien and given its definitive form by Ze'ev Raban. It joined Jugendstil and Symbolism to Persian, Syrian and Islamic ornament, Yemenite silverwork and ancient Jewish coins to make a Jewish national art: biblical and Zionist scenes in symmetrical, ornament-packed frames, hand-drawn Hebrew letters as decoration, and jewel colours heightened with gold, on books, posters, carpets, metalwork and tiles until the school closed in 1929 (its designs lingered on objects into the 1950s).

An ornate illuminated-manuscript-style poster reads “BRIGHT PATHS,” surrounded by gold Celtic knotwork, spirals, and patterned borders in blue, green, and rust red. Mirrored birds flank a sun above the lettering, while two deer frame a winding river through green hills below.

1861–1951 · Western Europe Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering 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.