Art For Art's Sake: Unknown, Various

So, I took a trip to Dublin with an old schoolfriend for their year of ‘European Capital of Culture’ in 1991, having really enjoyed a citybreak to Glasgow the preceding year for theirs.

And on the list of things to do and see was one I wasn't all that keen on, at first. It was to go see Book of Kells.

A musty old illustrated manuscript? Really? Ah, well, off we went, on a lovely sunny day (which we’d have really better spent shopping, since it was the only dry day of the trip!) to go see it.

And…what a revelation!

The illustrations were beautiful, birds and beasts in intricate detail, and happily, replicated all over the town’s shops, in clothing, in sculpture, in books, and most of all, in jewellery. So I brought back my own little piece of the masterpiece:

And thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you too can take a walk through the pages, as they've been digitised!