RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary Winner Announced

Fiona Harrington is the inaugural winner of the RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary. An Irish visual artist who works with handmade lace, Fiona is also a curator and a researcher and recipient of numerous international awards including the Thomas Damann Bursary and the RDS Graduate Prize, National Craft Award.

The RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary 2021 is part of an innovative collaboration funded by the RDS and managed by Design & Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI) to support contemporary lacemakers and celebrate Ireland’s rich history of needlework. The Branchardière Fund was set up in 1890 with a bequest from Eleonore Riego De La Branchardière (her mother was Irish and her father was French), whose 72 books on needlework revolutionised the world of lace and had a major influence on fashion in the Victorian era. In subsequent years the fund was administered by several different organisations and financed a range of projects that helped workers in the Irish Lace industry. From 2001 to 2017 the RDS distributed the proceeds of the fund via a lace prize at its annual RDS Crafts Competition/Awards. The restructuring of the RDS Craft Awards in 2018 did not facilitate a specific award for lace, which provided the inspiration for this new partnership with the DCCI and the creation of the new RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary.

Winning the bursary allows Fiona to develop her ideas and create a new collection of handmade lace artwork through which she aims to “strengthen the profile of Irish lace worldwide and reconnect with Ireland’s history of being a world class producer of handmade lace.” Fiona has built up a significant public profile in the world of lace and will bring the craft to international attention through her work. She was recently selected as a representative of excellence in craftsmanship on the Michelangelo Foundation’s, Homo Faber Guide - a unique digital platform that features the best in crafts mastery across Europe.

Fiona began her training in lacemaking as an intern in Kenmare Lace and Design Centre in 2012 and has since developed and applied her craft to contemporary art and social commentary. Her studio project for her MA in Art and Research Collaboration was titled Irish Lace: Contradiction, Complexity and Commodity. It explored the relationship between domestic activity and female labour and examined how lace was often used to both control and liberate women. Fiona’s work is innovating the medium and bringing it to new audiences. In her piece Fragile Economies, she interspliced wire with thread, enabling her to create three-dimensional sculptural lace forms that she applied to eggshells. She was invited to participate in Lace Paint Hair, a 3-person exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2020. In June 2021 she will represent Ireland at Doily Free Zone - an international lace symposium.

DCCI Chief Executive Rosemary Steen said: “Design & Crafts Council Ireland is delighted to collaborate with the RDS on the Branchardière Lace Bursary and to congratulate such an esteemed and worthy winner as Fiona Harrington. The reinstatement of the Bursary represents DCCI’s commitment to support the wider Irish craft and design sector by presenting career-changing opportunities for makers to invest time in their creative process.  This in turn contributes to the ongoing legacy of the craft that they are part of. It has been wonderful to see the level of public interest that The RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary has evoked, testifying to the resurgence of design and crafts that we have seen in recent years.”

RDS Chief Executive Officer Geraldine Ruane said: “The RDS is delighted to congratulate Fiona Harrington, the winner of the inaugural 2021 RDS Branchardière Lace Bursary. Fiona, who is a former exhibitor and winner at the RDS Craft Awards exhibition, explores how lace interacts with found materials to create beautiful works of art. She has been positioning lace within the context of contemporary art and design for many years and with her recent inclusion in the Michelangelo Foundation’s prestigious Homo Faber Guide, strengthens her international profile, helping to progress and preserve Irish lace in the 21st century.”