Entwined Echoes: Norse, Celtic and Medieval Influences in Glass

Entwined Echoes began with a birthday commission. The recipient's favourite whisky was Highland Park, and I found myself drawn to the Norse inspired visual language created for the bottle. It wasn't the individual illustrations that interested me, but the way ornament, lettering and symbolism combined to create a distinctive visual language. That became the catalyst for developing a completely new body of work for glass.

From there, other influences began to weave themselves into the collection. Living close to Lindisfarne left me fascinated by the decorated initials and illuminated lettering found in medieval manuscripts. The horse entered the collection simply because one of my closest friends rides. The triskelion, long associated with movement and continuity, felt equally at home alongside the phrase uisge beatha, the water of life. Norse mythology provided another thread, including Eikþyrnir, the great stag whose antlers feed the rivers of the world.

The designs arrived one by one, gradually sharing a common visual language. Norse figures, Celtic symbols and medieval lettering became the related threads of Entwined Echoes.