Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular illuminated manuscripts. They are pages of mainly geometrical ornamentation, which may include repeated animal forms, typically placed at the beginning of each of the four Gospels in Gospel Books. The designation "carpet page" is used to describe those pages in Christian, Islamic, or Jewish illuminated manuscripts that contain little or no text and which are filled entirely with decorative motifs.[1][2][3] They are distinct from pages devoted to highly decorated historiated initials, though the style of decoration may be very similar.[4]
Carpet pages are wholly devoted to ornamentation with brilliant colors, active lines, and complex patterns of interlace. They are normally symmetrical, or very nearly so, about both a horizontal and vertical axis, though for example the page at right is only symmetrical about a vertical axis. Some art historians find their origin in Coptic decorative book pages,[5] and they also clearly borrow from contemporary metalwork decoration. Oriental carpets, or other textiles, may themselves have been influences. The stamped and tooled leather book binding of the Stonyhurst Gospel represents a simple carpet page in another medium,[6] and the few surviving metalwork book covers or book shrines from the same period, such as that on the Lindau Gospels, are also close parallels.[7] Roman floor mosaics seen in post-Roman Britain, are also cited as a possible source.[8] The Hebrew Codex Cairensis, from 9th century Galilee, also contains a similar type of page, but stylistically very different.
The earliest surviving example is from the early 7th century Bobbio Orosius, and relates more closely to Late Antique decoration. There are notable carpet pages in the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow, and other manuscripts.[9]
In the current usage of modern calligraphers, the term, carpet page is used to describe a manuscript page that is painted so as to completely fill the page with patterned motifs, rather than with an illumination and that is historiated.[10]
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