Plant stems is a group of free standing wire columns, which use traditional grounds of lace for the patterning, and created using traditional techniques. Plants have long informed lace design and using this influence, I researched contemporary plant issues to create ‘genetically modified’ lace incorporating the DNA helix in the largest column, representing plant breeding to produce bigger and bolder lace for the 21st century.

Generally the public overlooks the intricacies of lace in exhibition, in the same way that many lacemakers overlook the grounds that form the supporting structure of the design elements, and I wanted to shift this perception in both, by making the viewer look deeper into meaning, before realising that the construction is of bobbin lace.