Celtic

On YokoFolio, pick the style Celtic and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. The test is simple and foolproof: follow an interlace with your finger in the photos. It should alternate over and under regularly at every crossing, never twice the same way in a row. Plenty of designs found online contain weaving mistakes; an artist who works in this style corrects them instead of tracing.

Less than you're told. Irish and Scottish insular art is essentially decorative and religious: the interlace fills space, and the spirals and triskeles are old shapes whose modern readings — three worlds, eternity, the cycle of life — came much later, often in the 20th century. That takes nothing away from their beauty, but it's better to know it than to wear an invented meaning believing it's ancient.

Two cautions. The first is about sources: sheets of “Celtic designs” sold online happily mix insular art, Norse, Pictish and shapes invented in the last century. If you want an Irish or Scottish motif, ask your artist to work from a real source — a manuscript, a stone cross. The second is more serious: some symbols, particularly sun crosses and runes wrongly attached to the Celtic world, have been taken up by far-right groups. Read up on what you're wearing.

The tree of life, whose roots and branches meet in a circle, is the most requested design. Then come woven animals — wolf, dragon, raven, stag, hound — whose bodies form the interlace, then the endless knots, the triskeles and the crosses. Continuous bands that wrap an arm or a leg are an old and very durable use. In every case: space it generously, because tight interlace closes up.