Celtic knots puzzled me when I was a kid. I could not imagine how an endless knot could be tied. The legend about the Gordian Knot made it even more mystical.

Recently I attended a presentation on how to draw a Celtic knot on wooden plates and bowls as a decoration. The presenter, Sharon Doughtie, has done a wonderful job by sharing her techniques, showing the decoration in progress and answering questions.

I wanted to try the learned techniques on a simple project, so I decided to decorate a round coaster – the simplest project ever – with a Celtic knot pattern. I made two coasters from basswood: 3.5″ and 3″ diameter.

Two Celtic Knot Coasters

There are many different types of Celtic knots. I wanted to use the endless knot variation of the Basket weave knot. To fit that knot on a round coaster I curved the pattern to fit the knot design into a circle and connected the ends. Well, I didn’t know but I ended up with the Turk’s head knot.

I used a small wood burner to “draw” the knot. First I outlined the lines with the mini skew-chisel woodburning pen and then used the shading pen (see the right picture) to darken the areas near overlapping bends.

To keep the gradient color consistent it is important to complete shading of a Celtic knot without changing the pen tip temperature. I shaded two coasters with different temperature, so the larger coaster is a little darker.

Shading was a real challenge (I spent several hours shading) but I am glad to see the achieved 3D effect on these coasters.