Animal Interlace

animal interlace, in calligraphy, rich, fanciful decorative motif characteristic of work by the Hiberno-Saxon book artists of the early Middle Ages in the British Isles. Its intertwined, fantastic animal and bird forms are often densely and minutely detailed—an example in the Book of Kells (c. 800) contains 158 interlacements in a space of 0.25 square inch (1.61 square cm). Another work of comparable stylistic maturity is the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in Northumbria in honour of St. Cuthbert soon after his death in 687.