The Insular artists of early medieval Ireland and Britain (c. AD 600-1100) developed a virtuosic form of ornament referred to in this lecture as ‘transmutation’, in which they physically manipulated different abstract patterns, so that one pattern transformed seamlessly into another pattern that possessed a radically different underlying geometric structure than the first. Furthermore, they also nurtured a unique tradition of key pattern, a design comprised of angular spiral shapes that is found across the globe, but which Insular artists raised to an extreme level of complexity and which they sometimes included in transmutation.

Transmutation and key pattern are particularly common in Pictish sculpture, but also occur in a collection of late 8th- to early 9th-century English embroidered and woven textiles now held in Maaseik, Belgium (Musea Maaseik/Maaseik Museums). Across Britain and Ireland in this period, women were the creators of textiles and respected as artists in their own right. In this lecture, Cynthia will present ongoing research from her Leverhulme fellowship project. In particular, she will compare Pictish and early English carved stone, metalwork, and Insular manuscript illuminations, with a set of narrow bands woven in silk and gold from the Maaseik textile collection. These bands were tablet-woven, or created by stringing threads through holes in bone or wooden cards and repeatedly turning the latter to create a patterned textile. Through her combined academic analysis of the key patterns and transmutation on the bands, and her practical, reconstructive research as a tablet-weaver herself, Cynthia will explore how women tablet-weavers impacted the development of Insular transmutation and key pattern in other media like metalwork, manuscripts, and carved stone. These textile survivals therefore shed new light on Insular women’s roles as masterful geometers and influential creators of complex ornament alongside male artisans.

*Cynthia thanks Musea Maaseik for generously permitting her to photograph and examine in person the early English textiles in the Collectie Musea Maaseik.

Cynthia Thickpenny is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of History of Art at the Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh). Her fellowship project is entitled ‘The Transmutation of Patterns and the Role of Women in Insular Art’ and is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Originally from California, Cynthia Thickpenny moved to Glasgow for her postgraduate studies. She earned a PhD in Celtic from the University of Glasgow in 2019, supported by a College of Arts scholarship. Her thesis investigated key pattern, an abstract design that was particularly prominent and complex in Insular art. In 2020, as part of multi-university team, she edited and published Peopling Insular Art: Practice, Performance, Perception, the proceedings of the eighth International Conference on Insular Art. Her 2019 article in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (‘Abstract Pattern on Stone Fragments from Applecross: The Master Carver of Northern Pictland?’ vol. 148, 147-76) won the Society’s RBK Stevenson Award.