Lacy bursary winner to create artwork at Mayo museum

THE Design & Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI) has announced Camilla Hanney and Róisín de Buitléar as joint recipients of this year’s RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary 2022.

Valued at €3,000, the purpose of the award is to provide funds to support contemporary Irish lacemakers and DCCI member organisations. The tradition of lacemaking remains very much alive in Ireland, and knitting, crochet and needlework has undergone a revival in recent years.

Passionate about Ireland’s culture and traditions, Róisín de Buitléar plans to use the bursary to create a large-scale artwork for construction and installation at the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life in Turlough, Castlebar.

The artwork is intended to be made on-site in an exploration of craft techniques that include the wider community, which encourages the contribution of skills and knowledge sharing.

Camilla Hanney will use the bursary to develop a new series of work comprising of a combination of hand built ceramic wall works, draped, folded, and imprinted with traditional Irish lace patterns, alongside physical swatches, doilies, and handkerchiefs of fabric dipped in porcelain slip and fired to create delicate, white ceramic fragments.

Speaking about the bursary, De Builtear said: “Lace is an international language of craft, a line of history shared by people throughout the world. I aim to study lace history and practice in private and museum collections. I wish to research the configuration of lace themes in contemporary practice to examine the use, production, and placement of lace fabric in a historical and contemporary context.”

Said Hanney: “Lace often enters my work as a central motif within the physical work I make, while also quietly informing a lot of the research behind my practice. I am interested in the conflicting properties between a material that is so often associated with innocence and virtue but was originally created by women of the Magdalene laundries who were considered by the Catholic church as ‘immoral’ or ‘impure’”.

The bursary is named after Eleonore Riego de la Branchardière, whose 72 books on needlework revolutionised the world of lace and had a major influence on fashion in the Victorian era. Eleanore’s mother was Irish, her father was French, and the influence of these two cultures helped her fit easily into Victorian society.

She became a needlework star, and her patterns were used by Irish women to create the in-demand fashion for English ladies. Lacemaking proved a reliable source of income for many Irish families during the Great Famine and paid the cost of passage to the United States for many single women.