Celtic and Old Norse Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)

Artists, illustrators, designers, and craftspeople in search of exceptionally bold and inventive motifs will find them in this versatile treasury brimming with 125 royalty-free designs. Taken from authentic Celtic and Old Norse sources, they include an amazing array of birds, human figures, and mythological creatures, all ingeniously woven into an intricate network of spirals and interlacings.
Meticulously adapted from artwork that graced ancient rune stones and religious symbols, furniture, manuscripts, bronze mirrors, sword hilts, cooking utensils, and other artifacts, the illustrations depict a crucifix; decorative creatures that adorned the pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels; interwoven designs from stone crosses of Ireland, Scotland, and Cornwall; and many other designs and motifs.
Convenient and inexpensive, this collection offers inspiration and a wealth of immediately usable dramatic ornamentation rich in character and distinctive in content.

I bought this book looking for inspiration for a Celtic or Viking tattoo design. Hearing what a revered artist Courtney Davis was, I thought I couldn't go wrong with this book. Unfortunately, all the drawings were incredibly unsophisticated and they remind me more of an amateur's work (perhaps at copying Courtney Davis). All of the designs were in black and white and many of them were just plain - and I *do* mean plain - knotwork patterns better suited to tablecloths than tattoos. There is none of the beautiful intricacy you find in real Celtic art - almost all of the patterns have huge unfilled or "blackened" spaces.
If you're looking for inspiration in Celtic design, buy a reproduction of the Book of Kells. I know that will put the shoddiness of this work to light. I suspect this was just a cheap attempt at making money and that Courtney himself does not prize this work.
The good news is - it's cheap, so it wasn't a total waste.