Amanda Cobbett is an award-winning textile artist with over 25 years’ experience.

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After studying at Chelsea College of Art (UAL), Amanda worked for many happy years in the printed textile design industry, but after a move to the country and a gift of an old Bernina sewing machine, her long held desire to be a maker as well as a designer finally came to fruition. Inspired by nature in all its forms, Amanda’s 3-dimensional, papier-mâché and machine-embroidered sculptures are created from her studio in the Surrey Hills.   

 

Her artistic talent is embedded in her DNA – her passion for textiles developed at an early age whilst watching her mother and grandmothers, all gifted seamstresses. Her father a draughtsman, and grandfather, a talented engineer, also played a part – their ability to visualise in 3D, and to deftly turn a sketch into an object, is a skill that Amanda has inherited and which is manifest in her work today. These attributes, together with her love of mark-making, are the basis from which each piece of work is created.

 

During her daily dog walk Amanda scours the understorey of the forest floor seeking its hidden treasures, photographing and collecting fallen debris. Over time, she has honed an inherent ability to locate intriguing flora in the most unexpected of places.  Back at the studio, she ‘draws’ with the sewing machine needle into a dissolvable fabric, and by building up layers of thread creates a new fabric that she moulds into textile copies of the natural world. Machining approximately 130,000 individual stitches a day, Amanda’s creations are not only a textile tour de force but are educational, highlighting the beauty and diversity that exists in the undergrowth. With a sense of fun, each unique piece of work is displayed in a contemporary form of the Victorian display case, allowing the work to be wall-hung and viewed from all angles.

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