Bella Lane, from Amazon Rainforest to London

Usual London weather, threatening dark clouds, a nice wind and a ray of sunlight shining through Battersea Park luxuriant greenery. Near the adorable pond I meet Bella Lane, a professional embroiderer from Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, who has been living in London for fifteen years.

In 2009 she graduated from Royal School of Needlework, after three years of Apprenticeship. During the studies her extraordinary talent was already clear and on the final year at RSN her works received several prizes. Since then she has dedicated herself to embroidery, as a full-time job: she works as a freelancer with designers, stylists and private clients; she gives group and individual classes and she restores antique embroideries. Lately she’s also collaborating with the Peruvian performer José Nvarro as a theatre costume designer, adding a new specialization to her curriculum.

Nowadays her schedule is pretty tight: tomorrow she is giving a class to a duchess for example. Ambassadors, princes and aristocratics in general, British and foreigners, often contact her to learn a few tips or ask her to decorate their priceless clothes. She also collaborates with the British stylist Zandra Rhodes, who appeciated her graduating works at the Royal School of Needlework and now assigns her those tasks that her staff wouldn’t be able to deal with.
Her passion for embroidery made her create the London’s Embroidery Club in 2013, where she gives many of her classes. Bella tells me embroidery is pretty appreciated in UK and young people would like to learn how to do it, both for their own pleasure or with professional intentions. It is undeniable that many young artists and designers become interested in this art to use it in their work.

Despite her busy life in London, it is clear her love for her country and native culture. In fact her main dream is to go back to Peru in a few years. Her projects also head to the homeland, where embroidery has a very ancient tradition, but has not been safeguarded as the generations followed one another. Bella tells me she wishes to open a real embroidery school in Lima, whit highly qualifying classes as the ones she attended in London, to help Peruvian people follow their passions and show their own talent.

With this long term project in her mind, in 2011 she created Manos Amazónicas with her sister: a textile enterprise to nationally and internationally promote Amazon handmade art and culture. While visiting her family her sister and her decided to organize a two days workshop for people in the area and teach them a few basic stitches for arpillera, a technique that uses recycled fabric cut-outs to create coloured works. Since then she goes there every year and they started sewing pillows and coin purses with the fabrics, they sell turists though an NGO.

In two years Bella would also like to exhibit some of her works inspired to Peru Spanish viceroyalty. Without praising colonization, she tells me about the gorgeous French dresses worn by Spanish women who brought elegance and glamour into the country, highly influencing local culture. She would like to show such an important age, through embroidery, meant as a language to connect to other cultures.

In about two hours I was completely infected by Bella’s enthusiasm and I wish I could fly to Iquitos right away and attend one of her workshop of arpillera with her students from the Amazon Rainforest. For the moment I have to make do with her stories and a few pictures she kindly donated me.