Two of Maggie's new lace sculptures, made in collaboration with PowerHouse Made, 2026. Image: Powerhouse Museum, Liverpool. © Maggie Hensel-Brown.
MAGGIE HENSEL-BROWN x POWERHOUSE MADE, now available via the Liverpool PowerHouse Museum’s Store. Thanks to Stephen Todd for the featured article.
For Powerhouse Made, Hensel-Brown has created three small works inspired by one of the museum’s historic lace pieces, a depiction of Judith beheading Holofernes. The biblical story, in which Judith saves her people by killing an invading general, has been repeatedly depicted in art, including in lace.
Hensel-Brown first encountered the Powerhouse work shortly after discovering lace, when she visited the museum’s collection looking for inspiration. It stopped her in her tracks.
‘I saw that piece and it blew my mind,’ she says.
The encounter stayed with her. She has since seen 3 celebrated historical lace works depicting Judith and Holofernes in person, but the Powerhouse example, she says, is significant because it was the first. (…)
That tension between fragility and force, ornament and violence, is part of what draws her to lace.
She is also fascinated by the stories embedded in the medium’s history. Lace was historically a female-dominated practice, even as the finished objects became symbols of wealth and status for churches and wealthy households. The makers themselves were often forgotten.