The magic of mushrooms
Presented in perspex curiosity cabinets, the intricate, embroidered fungi and lichen created by art embroiderer Amanda Cobbett are uncannily realistic and utterly bewitching
Artist Amanda Cobbett creates uncannily realistic embroidered fungi and lichen
Art embroiderer Amanda Cobbett’s work is like the best form of magic – delightful, surprising and, to the untrained eye, completely unfathomable. At first glance her perspex curiosity cabinets seem filled with a simple assortment of fungi, twigs or lichen. But look closer and you’ll see, just, that these are Amanda’s, not Mother Nature’s, creations, though it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what is different. “People often think I’ve embroidered on bark,” says Amanda. “Or they ask how I’ve preserved the mushrooms, but in fact I use no natural materials at all.” Instead, Amanda’s ‘preservations’ – for this is how she thinks of them – are a beguiling blend of papier-mâché and machine embroidery, embellished with hand-coloured silks and cleverly worked threads, often singed to earthy effect with a tool not unlike a soldering iron.
This fascination with preservation began when Amanda was studying textile design at Chelsea College of Art in the early 1990s, when a class trip took her to the Natural History Museum. “We were shown the original copperplate illustrations from Captain Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour,” she says. “I loved the idea that their beauty had lasted all this time, and also that you’d never know whether they were real or whether the artist had used a bit of licence and made them up.”
Curiosity piqued, she began researching in other departments (most notably entomology, where she was fascinated by the ‘ little jewel-like bugs pinned out in display trays’) and visited The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with similar aims. A trip to the mycology department made a particular impression. Where the Natural History Museum’s bugs had been preserved as if they were still living – almost – the tissue paper she drew back here
revealed something quite different – a sad-looking collection of shrivelled mushrooms. “It struck me as a real shame that they had once been beautiful and now were not. It got me thinking about how to make something look preserved when it obviously isn’t.”
Fast-forward 12 years, after a successful, if exhausting, career as a designer producing floral prints for clothing and interior design brands, and it is this idea that Amanda now explores in her work, using finds from her twicedaily dog walks in Surrey’s Hurtwood Forest as her inspiration. Her choice of presentation was influenced by another visit, this time to Overbeck’s, the National Trust property in Devon, where the taxidermy collections are all presented in cases, or in domed display glasses. But while a Victorian display case is wooden and only allows for an overhead view, Amanda’s perspex cases, custom-made to the highest standards, allow her pieces to be seen from all angles. “On their own, the pieces are one thing, but the fact that they’re presented as a collection makes them special,” she says. “It suggests a back story, and signals that they’re worthy of closer inspection.”
Ultimately, it is this act of inspection, of looking closely, that she hopes her pieces engender. “Walking in the forest and finding these things has given me real pleasure,” she says, “but they are not intrinsically special or rare – indeed many people might not even notice this magical world in the undergrowth. I suppose, by remaking and presenting parts of it in this way, I’m trying to highlight it.” And of course, to preserve it for the future.
USEFUL INFORMATION Find out more about Amanda’s work at amandacobbett.com and see it at Byard Art’s Christmas Cracker exhibition, 10 November – 24 December, Byard Art, 14 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SJ. Tel 01223 464646, byardart.co.uk