Knotbloom Hand Made Celtic Earrings with Shield Shaped Knotwork Drops & Beaded Borders | Silver Tone Hook Wires | Anniversary Gift | RK-1602

The Knotbloom is a pair of Celtic earrings built around a shield shaped drop, sometimes called a heater shape, with a continuous band of interlaced knotwork filling the field and a fine beaded border running round the outside. The drops are finished in an oxidised silver tone, so the recesses hold shadow and the raised strands stay bright, and they hang from simple hook wires that pass through the ear and rest without a back.

Interlace of this kind is one of the few art styles that genuinely belongs to both sides of the Viking age. Irish and Northumbrian workshops had been building knotwork into stone, metal and manuscript for two centuries before the first Norse ships arrived, and when Norse settlers set up in Dublin and York they absorbed it, mixed it with their own gripping beast and Urnes traditions, and produced the Hiberno Norse style that runs through both cultures afterwards. Each pair is finished, oxidised, polished and paired in the Czech Republic, with our lifetime warranty against defects in the making and the fittings, no end date and no receipt needed. It sits in the Anglo Saxon and Celtic pieces, a step across from the Viking rings and bracelets.

Specifications

How Celtic knotwork is actually built

People describe Celtic interlace as freehand decoration. It is almost the opposite. Insular knotwork is constructed on a grid, and once you know the method you can see it in everything from the Book of Kells to the high crosses at Monasterboice.

The scribe or the smith starts by ruling a lattice of dots. Lines are then drawn diagonally between those dots to form a plait, which is the simplest possible interlace, a continuous over and under weave with no pattern in it. The design comes from breaking that plait. Wherever you place a break, the two strands that would have crossed there are joined instead and turned back, and the plait reorganises itself around the interruption. Different arrangements of breaks give completely different knots from the same starting grid. That is why medieval interlace is so consistent in its rhythm and so varied in its shapes.

There is one absolute rule and the whole thing collapses without it. Every crossing must alternate. If a strand goes over at one crossing it must go under at the next, all the way round. Break the alternation and the eye immediately reads the pattern as wrong even if it cannot say why. Look closely at the Knotbloom drops and you can follow a single strand through the panel and watch it alternate at every junction until it returns to where it started, which is why interlace is so often described as having no beginning and no end.

The beaded border round the edge is not filler either. A row of raised dots gives the eye a hard boundary so the interlace reads as a contained panel rather than a fragment, and it is exactly what insular metalworkers used for the same reason on brooch and reliquary borders.

The finish and the fittings

The drops are cast, cleaned up and then oxidised, which is a controlled darkening of the surface rather than a paint. The piece is then polished back so the high points come up bright and the darkening stays in the recesses. That two tone result is what makes a knotwork panel legible. Polish it uniformly and the interlace disappears into shine. Darken it uniformly and it disappears into shadow. The contrast is the design.

They are a silver tone alloy and not solid sterling silver, and we say so rather than letting the colour imply otherwise. The hook wires are stainless steel, chosen because it is hard, holds a shape, and is far less likely to bother a sensitive ear than a plated base metal wire. If you want sterling silver ear wires, ask in the order notes and we will fit them. The hooks are a simple shepherd’s crook with a slight kick at the end, so they sit in the ear without a stopper, though a pair of clear plastic stoppers is a sensible addition if you are wearing them somewhere lively.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel, the leather or the wood. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us where it goes. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it. Earrings are too small to take a rune line without losing the knotwork, so on this piece we engrave the leather pouch instead, or a matching pendant if you want the runes on something readable. Ask on the engraving page.

Fit and sizing

These are drop earrings rather than studs, so the fit question is about length and weight rather than diameter. The drop is twenty two millimetres and the whole earring hangs about forty millimetres from the top of the hook, which puts the bottom of the panel roughly level with the jawline on most people. That is a mid length. It is long enough to move when you turn your head and short enough not to catch on a collar.

At three grams each they are light. Weight is what causes a pierced ear to ache after a few hours and what stretches a piercing over years, and anything under about five grams is comfortable for a full day. The hook wire is a standard gauge that fits a normal healed piercing without needing to be forced. If your piercings are older and have widened, the wire will simply sit looser, which is not a problem with a hook.

If you have not worn hooks before, the trick is to feed the wire from the front and let gravity do the rest rather than pushing. They come off the same way, lifting up and forward.

Care

An oxidised finish is deliberately dark, so the one thing you must not do is treat it like tarnish and try to remove it. No silver dips, no polishing pastes and no ultrasonic cleaners, all of which strip the oxidisation out of the recesses and leave you with a flat grey panel. To clean them, wipe the raised strands with a dry jeweller’s cloth and leave the dark recesses alone. Take them off before showering, swimming or sleeping. Chlorine, salt water and hairspray are the three things that dull a plated or oxidised finish fastest. Store them in the leather pouch so they do not rub against harder jewellery.

Made in the Czech Republic

This is a handmade piece from the Czech Republic, made in a workshop that still forges, grinds and finishes by hand instead of stamping parts out. The smiths there have kept the older way of working, and the wood, horn and leather are shaped and fitted by hand as well. Two pieces of the same design will never be identical, and that is part of what you are buying.

Ransack Viking is a United States company. We handle the import ourselves, look over every piece when it lands and ship from our warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee. Engraving is done in the United States after the piece arrives, so your design goes on before we send it out.

A note on handmade variation

This is hand made, not machine made or bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph. Oxidisation is a chemical process and it lands a little differently every time, so one pair may read slightly darker in the recesses than another. The two earrings in your pair are matched to each other, which is the part that shows when they are worn. Leather pouches vary in tone from hide to hide. The dimensions, the material and the build are the same every time. The character is not. Anyone new to this should read how a round shield was built first, then what Viking armour actually was.

Frequently asked questions

Are these sterling silver

The drops are a silver tone alloy with an oxidised finish, not solid sterling. The ear wires are stainless steel. Sterling wires or a full sterling pair can be quoted on request.

Will they irritate sensitive ears

Stainless steel wires suit most people who react to plated base metal. If you know you react to almost everything, ask us for sterling silver wires before you order.

How long do they hang

About forty millimetres from the top of the hook, which sits around the jawline on most people. The drop itself is twenty two millimetres.

Can I clean the dark parts off

Please do not. The dark recesses are the design. Polishing them out leaves a flat panel with no readable knotwork.

Is a pair included or is this one earring

A matched pair, both drops finished together, supplied in one grey leather drawstring pouch.

How long does delivery take

One to two weeks of processing, then free shipping inside the United States.

What is in the box

• One matched pair of Knotbloom Celtic knotwork earrings
• Stainless steel hook wires fitted
• One grey leather drawstring pouch and a care card
• Made and finished in the Czech Republic

Explore the range

Browse the Anglo Saxon and Celtic pieces, the Norse pendants, the Viking rings and bracelets, or read the guides.