Alternative View of the Carpet Pages
The following quote from Edwin L. Arnold book Gullivar of Mars leads us to an alternative view of the Carpet Pages.
…the strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern. It was threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design still lived in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged it to my stove-front and spread it out, it seemed to me that it was much like a star map done by a scribe who had lately recovered from delirium tremens as anything else. In the centre appeared a round such as might be taken for a sun, while here and there, in the field as heralds say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could have forced a way in search of meaning.
The main references for the Carpet Pages are:-
The Book of Kells, The Work of Angels Dvd.
The art of Shinro Ohtake and the graphic design of Vaughn Oliver/v23.
Secondary references are:-
Andrew Lang’s “Coloured” Fairy Books
Edwin L. Arnold Gullivar of Mars
Clive Barker’s ‘Weave World’
Marian Bantjes ‘I Wonder’
