Hand and Lock Prize
Left, work by Claire Goodwin, right, work by Lucie Bourreau
The results of this year’s Hand and Lock Prize for Embroidery have been announced, with first prize going to Lucie Bourreau of France
Hand and Lock is a London-based company specialising in all types of hand embroidery ranging from couture, military costumes and soft furnishings to vestments and flags. Its prize is designed to ‘promote the use of hand embroidered surface embellishment within the fashion design and manufacturing industries’. This means that the entries have to have some commercial viability – so the judges aren’t looking for cutting-edge textile art, but rather a high level of technical skill and craftsmanship. And this is exactly why Lucie Bourreau was given the $10,000 first prize; her intricate Turkish-style floral embroidery is eye-wateringly detailed and highly elaborate, clearly requiring huge amounts of technical skill to realise.
The runners up were UK-based Renee Lindell and Yumiko Komai from Japan – they get $2,000 and $1,000 respectively – while US-based Theresa Alexander got a commendation. The winners of the student category were Beatrice Newman, Aisling Eagan and Claire Goodwin.
Work by the finalists can be seen at Hand and Lock’s annual conference, this year called ‘Embroidery…with Style’ on 31 October in Glasgow held in conjunction with Glasgow Caledonian University.
www.handembroidery.com
