Back in May 2024 Dr Kathryn McSweeney brought two of her colleagues from ATU St Angela’s College to the ATU Makerspace to reimagine some designs they had in mind for an exhibition that was about to take place in the Hamilton Gallery in Sligo. The exhibition entitled ‘Lace in Context’ was part of the larger EU project TRACtion which sees the ATU, University of Malta and University of Helsinki collaborate on research into traditional costumes and textiles.
A design which particularly struck the team was a pinwheel lace design which we took a photograph of and using the Makerspace Lasercutter software we translated into individual vector shapes that were cut out of oak faced plywood. The team then painstakingly reassembled the individual pieces back into a 3D relief jigsaw and mounted them on birch ply. A laser etched version in frosted acrylic was also made. The pieces were then displayed at the exhibition at the end of May.
