Black and white line drawing of a triquetra Celtic knot, three interlaced loops with a solid black centre, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Triquetra Celtic knot design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A bold, symmetrical triquetra knot made of three interlocking loops drawn with thick black outlines and white bands. The over and under weaving creates a continuous knot, and the centre is filled solid black. The design is shown flat on a plain white background, with no shading or grey tones.

Geometric Triquetra Celtic knot Trinity knot Interlace Knot

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Ailred,

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The copyist who came up from Lindisfarne last month has finished the third page of the Gospel of the abbey's new binding, and he will not let anyone touch the knotwork until he has counted every crossing twice. I told him the eye of a scribe is not the eye of a mason, and he told me that a knot which lies is worse than a knot left unfinished. He has a point, though I will not give it to him. Yesterday he made me hold the lamp while he traced the three loops with a bone stylus, over and under, over and under, until the pattern came back round to where it began. He said the trick was never in the line but in the gaps where the band goes beneath itself.

When the lamp guttered he laughed at me for flinching, and then he told me about his mother's spinning, how she could run three threads into a plait without once losing her place. I asked whether this was why he chose the triquetra for the cover. He said no. He said he had only wanted something that could not be cut open at any point without the whole thing falling apart, and that he had been trying to say the same of the brethren for thirty years and had never found the picture.

I have left the lamp burning in the scriptorium tonight, which Prior Osric will complain about. The black centre of the knot is still wet where he filled it in. In the morning the first leaf goes to the bindery, and I will go and look at it before the bell, to see whether he has left the gap where the band slips under for me to find.