Celtic Wedding Rings

The Celts were a pastoral people, they lived in harmony with the land and its creatures; their belief was that all the things in Nature are interrelated having their unbreakable cycle of life and death. Therefore the manifestation of their art found from its very beginning a geometric stylization. Objects found to belong to Iron Age culture can endorse the statement. One of these geometric shapes is the spiral (a symbol for the serpent) which is the most ancient symbol in the Celtic art coming from the synthesis of their way of living.

Together with the geometric shapes that imitate in a most simple manner the living creatures, they used as a print of their craft the technique of knot work to decorate their living space and objects to wear. The origin of this craft lays way back to 450 A.D. and appeared as a result of their belief that the mysticism is the one surrounding their rituals and relationships.

Mainly used as decorative style, the know work started to be printed on the jewelry art as well. Celtic wedding rings, also known as Claddagh wedding rings, mirror the ethnic and cultural background of the couples, proving themselves to be an important key in the wedding ceremonies.

The knot work used in the Celtic wedding rings is seen to be as two eternal interconnected lines without beginning and without end. At a closer look one may discover in this whole series of woven, interconnected lines stylized forms of plants, animals and sometimes humans.

Beside the fact that we can find meanings to this craft of weaving in the light of new discoveries, there isn't any concrete evidence of a religious or philosophical significance whatsoever. We can not but wonder and admire their skills in managing to render some common lines the complexity of a human work, and thus the complexity that lies in nature.

The Celtic strongest belief was that animals are invested with features like strength and fertility, features that once incorporated in the symbolic representation of the jewels can be granted to the one who owns them.

In jewelry art appeared several variations of Celtic knot works in where the pattern repeats itself adding nature motifs or simply other geometric forms. There are these delicate and interesting twists that makes this art unique in its manifestation.