We are delighted to announce that Mountmellick Embroidery and Heritage museum has been invited to exhibit and provide workshops at Festival Interceltique de Lorient (commencing 5th August, for 1 week.)

This international festival of Celtic song, music and dance has been running annually in Lorient, Brittany, France, for the past 50 years.

This year the organising committee have decided to include Celtic needlework craft into their catalogue of events and approached us to teach and display Mountmellick Embroidery as Ireland's entry.

Ann and Dolores will represent the museum telling the story of this unique needlework, created in Mountmellick by Johanna Carter in 1825, and is the only form of embroidery from the nineteenth century which is entirely Irish in origin and design. In 2019 it was added to the National inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

We wish them bon voyage and know they will do us proud, promoting Mountmellick Embroidery as a living craft, linking nations and generations through the threads of time, while also promoting the museum and town of Mountmellick, Co. Laois.

We will post photographs and a report on their return.