Irene Brandtner de Martínez

Colcha embroidery artist Irene Brandtner de Martínez (photograph and biography by Rebecca Abrams, September 2020)

Irene Brandtner de Martínez (b. 1932, El Paso, Texas) was raised in Bayard, New Mexico, the eldest of five siblings. She is a lifelong embroiderer who has concentrated on colcha embroidery since 1992, the year of her retirement as a longtime librarian in the Santa Fe public schools and Santa Fe Arts Commission employee. Irene studied colcha embroidery with Mónica Sosaya-Halford at Santa Fe Community College more than two decades ago and learned to weave and spin from Beatrice Maestas Sandoval at El Rancho de las Golondrinas in 2005. Irene focuses on designing and stitching her works and jokingly refers to herself as “The Queen of Tiny Stitches” because she uses single-ply Paternayan (Persian) wool on linen. For more than fifty years Irene has enjoyed genealogy research. A distinguishing feature of her work is the use of colonial motifs, such as a vase with flowers alongside a dove. This reflects her intense interest in the history of the US Southwest and of New Spain (New Mexico) and her mother’s connection to New Mexico’s first colonial period. In addition to colcha embroidery, Irene also creates religious and secular watercolor, oil, acrylic, and egg tempera paintings in both traditional and contemporary styles. One of Irene’s gifts to the local colcha embroidery community is her love of design and her generosity in sharing her graphic skills; she regularly stencils designs onto fabric for her fellow colcha embroiderers so they have a design on which to stitch. Irene is a longtime volunteer at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts and at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. She is also a world traveler who has visited China, where she delighted in seeing fine silk embroiderers at work. Her work has been exhibited in numerous juried shows including Santa Fe’s Spanish Market, where she has been juried into both the Colcha Embroidery and Retablo categories. Irene has done extensive research on the history of European embroidered book covers. This led to her embroidering a book cover for “Santos and Saints: The Religious Folk Art of Hispanic New Mexico” for which she won the first place blue ribbon and was awarded the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2018. The following year, Irene again won the first place blue ribbon for a second book cover— this one covering a large notebook containing 25 different colonial motifs (flowers, birds, animals, etc.) on individual pieces of 8” by 9” sabanilla. Irene’s book covers perfectly synthesize her interest in historical research and colcha embroidery.