Spiral designs for a garden. Nancy Simpson, Wisconsin, USA

Dear Hugh, I am interested in spiral gardens. I was led to your site with that reference.
Forum (Hugh): Dear Nancy, Further to your enquiry I do have some reference to spirals in the Forum pages as you rightly point out and although not ‘gardens’ a full description on spiral construction can be found in “Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction” by George Bain (Constable 1996) ISBN No 0-09-476900-1 price £9.99. “This book deals with the Pictish School of artist craftsmen who cut pagan symbols like the Burghead Bull and in the early Christian era designed such superb examples of monumental sculpture such as the Aberlemno Cross and the counterparts in the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne, the amazing jewellery conceptions of the Ardagh chalice and other masterpieces”. See here for a UK review and for other Celtic subject books. “For those who have attempted to draw Celtic patterns and have found the task difficult or impossible this book is an invaluable guide to how the patterns were set-out. Once the design is complete, the underlying geometry is almost impossible to decipher, so it is greatly to the credit of the author and illustrator that he has achieved his task so well. This he has done with hundreds of immaculate black linear illustrations showing the basics of the patterns followed by the additional layers to show how the art work can be created. There are also sixteen photographs and six new colour plates. Though the work was first printed in 1951 it is still most relevant today with the great blossoming of interest in Celtic art-work. In addition to the patterns there are many alphabets and numerous figures, animals and mythological beasts. For those interested in this highly sophisticated artwork from the supposedly “Dark Ages” this is a very thorough guide to the subject and probably one of the best currently available”. I am also very interested in spirals and I will shortly be posting links to gardens of interest. In the book on page 61 are some methods for the construction of Spirals of the Pictish School of Celtic Art. The first three are ‘One coil Spirals’ which actually rarely occur in Pictish Art. However this is the spiral that Thomas Chippendale illustrates in ‘The Gentleman & Cabinet – Maker’s Director’. Regards Hugh O’Connell