Congratulations to the RSN Winners and Finalists of the recent international Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery. Read more about their entries and view images from the prize evening at Gallery Different in London.

Degree Graduate, Eliza Gomersall won The Worshipful Company of Broderers Associate Award and the Textile Art Student Category for her work ‘Palingenesis’ (Rebirth): A Story of Transformation

As a symbol of transformation, Eliza has chosen the form of a moth to tell a story of change, adaptation, and rebirth both in nature and within textile practices. Eliza’s hand embroidered fantastical moth measures approximately one metre in wingspan. She asks the observer to look within its wings to discover a continuing story of transformation and to consider the critical environmental challenges facing our planet.

Degree Graduate, Sabina Lima won The Worshipful Company of Gold & Silver Wyre Drawers Associate Award for Ablaze
Powerful wildfires are having a devastating impact on our climate, communities, and infrastructure. Fire, climate change and our fragile nature are the motifs chosen for Sabina’s project. It juxtaposes organic shapes representing trees with the shapes of flames consuming it. Ablaze evokes an emotional response in the viewer highlighting the importance of preserving our vulnerable ecosystems.

There were also two RSN Finalists:

1. Degree Graduate 2022 Linnea Lyndon in the Fashion Student Category for ‘Memorylands’

The concept for this project sees nature within the context of childhood memory. In combination with Linnea’s Scandinavian heritage, She has been inspired by memory and folklore to explore the patterns and textures within the natural forms seen in everyday life. The full ensemble mimics sunlight pouring through the treetops, the light beginning as a blinding silver, and fading out to reveal the colours and textures of the forest below.

2. Future Tutor Graduate 2022 Sally Randle in the Textile Art Student Category for ‘Environmental Change/Changing Environments’

Sally’s inspiration for this work is the vast contrast between the light, space and air of the Australian environment, and the lush soft grey green colours of the English environment.
To communicate the global impact of the environmental change, Sally has created interrelated scenes and systems, building images that link together through embroidered layers of texture and transparency, to show we are at a tipping point, and give the choice to move in either direction.

This year, Hand & Lock’s brief was to take inspiration from the power of nature. Evolution, adaption, biomimicry, texture, colour, craft and sustainable practices, imagining a future where humans learn from nature to live in harmony with nature. As you can see, our Graduates work varied hugely but all with this common thread.

RSN Graduates have now won one of the two main Awards five times over the last six years! Congratulations goes to all of the Finalists and Winners and we look forward to seeing more amazing work in the H&L Awards 2023!

Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery