NAME: Shiye Fu Zhiqi Zhang
DATE AND TIME: April 23 & May 2
LOCATION: Lab
SUBJECT: molding a butterfly

Interpretation of the recipe
“...and [this method applies as well] for strengthening the wings of either a butterfly or grasshopper, or any delicate part of an animal for which you need to add some thickness”.
According to Smith and Beentjes, the earliest record of life casting appears in Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’ Arte, in which he mentions casting human body parts and other animals such as bird, beast and fish. When going through the whole manuscript, there are many recipes discussing how to mold and cast an animal. Taken as a whole, the recipes about molding and casting animals are a manifestation of the author-practitioner’s virtuosity too, since the range of animals he was able to cast covers diverse creatures such as lizards, snakes, animals with shells such as crab, crayfish, turtles, birds, bats, rats as well as insects such as beetles, spiders flies and butterflies, and amazingly, spider webs. What this list actually articulates is his skill at casting. Moreover, the themes of molding and casting animals are not confined to replication, but also how to catch and keep them, and finally how to kill them. Thus, it shows the spectrum from natural historical knowledge to human artifice. It demonstrates how “human art could imitate natural processes of transformation and perhaps even of generation.”
In fol. 142v, the author-practitioner focused on how to mold the delicate part of an animal, which is consistent with the theme of the whole recipe about molding thin things. From the above excerpt we can ascertain that molding animals such as butterfly or grasshoppers were mentioned only briefly. We can only infer that the same method to thicken the petal of flowers is applied to the delicate part of an animal. Faced with very little information to go on from this excerpt, we consulted other related recipes in the manuscript in our reconstruction about how to mold a butterfly.
The first focal point about molding a butterfly is how do deal with the hairy part of its body and its fragile antennas. From this perspective, this is related to butter and oil discussion in molding pansies. In addition to the function of thickening the delicate parts, butter and wheat oil also help flatten the hairy parts of the animal. In the manuscript, the author-practitioner talks about this question several times but again, seems also to give self-contradictory conclusions.For example, the author-practitioner infol. 110v when talking about wheat oil, mentioned butterfly. Just as with molding pansies, he appears to believe heated wheat oil is a good material to thicken the delicate part. Also, in fol. 124r, the author-practitioner talked about how to mold hairy animals, whose hairs rise up and entangled. Here again, wheat oil, which dries very fast, is the best material to keep the hair laid down. Similarly, in both fol. 129v and fol. 130r, he mentioned again to use wheat oil to lay hairs down flat and make them firmer.
However, in a later recipe on fol. 152r, the author-practitioner came to a different conclusion. Here, he claims that “it is much better to rub hairy animals with butter than with wheat oil, because butter is much better and much more useful.” If the manuscript is the chronological representation of the author-practitioner’s hands-on work, then this might present a self-correction. The following recipe on fol. 154v makes the situation more complex. Here, the author-practitioner makes yet another self-correction, one is rather confusing. In this recipe, he came to the conclusion that melted butter works better for plants such as flowers and herbages, while wheat oil serves better for flies and other small animals. As with his discussion about pansies, his advice about the advantage of butter is vague, butter is just stated as being much better and much useful without any explicit reasons. As opposed to his observation about wheat oil, which according to the author-practitioner, dries very fast and hold the delicate part firm. Why does the author-practitioner do this? It seems that everytime he comes to the two materials---butter and wheat oil, he gives self-contradictory conclusions. What does the self-contradictory reveal here? How can we think of such kind of experience which is hard to represent through language when interacting with certain materials in terms of the intimacy with the materials? What’s the limitation of words and texts when facing the task of representing sensory experiences of interacting with materials?
In molding a butterfly, we also questioned whether it should be done in a one-piece or two-piece mold. And there is no direct instruction about how to mold a butterfly in the whole manuscript. Thus we had to make inference according to other similar recipes in BnF Ms. Fr.640. References of molding animals in the manuscript generally use a two-piece mold, as the author-practitioner specifies for casting the lizard, crayfish, crab, beetles, spiders and fly. As the butterfly falls in the category of “small animals”, it could be that a two-piece mold could be used in casting it. However, what distinguishes a butterfly from other small animals is that its extreme flatness. Unlike a more three-dimensional fly or beetle, a butterfly is more like the lettered-paper, which has a flat surface with rising letters on it. Also, to mold paper the author-practitioner suggested a two-piece mold too. Thus we believe it is highly likely a two-piece mold is also a good option for molding butterfly. On the other hand, a one-piece molding is also a candidate, since the delicacy of butterfly wings is almost the same as flower petals, which is molded in such a mold.
The art of deciphering the recipe left us with two questions. How will wheat oil and butter function in molding a butterfly? And what do these two materials say about the interaction with materials which are hard to represent? The second is that whether a one-piece mold or two-piece mold is better when it comes to mold a delicate butterfly.
Reconstruction part III: molding a butterfly
In casting the butterfly, we first tried out a two-piece mold. After applying wheat oil to the wings and bodies of the butterfly, we laid the butterfly in a piece of clay. We tried to press the butterfly against the clay so that it can be fixed in the clay wall. Then we used four pins to pierce the edge of its wings so as to fix them onto the clay. However, after being applied the wheat oil, the wings seemed unable to resist the wetness of the oil and it became transparent and even more delicate. Also, the wheat oil failed to hold on to the clay so that it was hard for the butterfly to rest seamlessly on the clay. At the same time, the wings were too delicate to withhold the pins. As a result, the wings broke.
After this first failure, we reconsidered the two-piece mold as a variable method for this particular life casting. We also more deeply about the butterfly itself as we use a desiccated specimen from the gift store of the American Museum of Natural History [Fig. 1 Butterfly specimen purchased from the American Museum of Natural History]. This urged us to think about the authenticity of the butterfly and how the state of the butterfly would potentially influence the cast. In the manuscript, the author-practitioner talked about how to catch, keep and kill animals which are used for molding and casting several times. The best time to kill an animal differs according to different types of animals. In fol. 110r, the author-practitioner mentioned to kill a snake “only a quarter of an hour before you want to cast it”. While in fol. 143r, when it comes to turtles, he suggested “you must not mold them too soon after they die because they are still stiff. But on the day after, you will be able to manipulate them and bend their legs as you wish”. In fol. 156r “Molding a fly”, he recommends to take them also and use them as quickly as you can after they have died, because it you leave them to dry out, their legs will break when you want to stretch them.”Essentially, all the animals the author-practitioners used in his molding and casting appear to be freshly caught. Furthermore, the timing of killing is of crucial significance to a successful casting. The underlying principle is make sure that the dead animals are not still and easy to maneuver. In our case however, our butterfly is a specimen, which aims to be preserved permanently. Its body has been dried out. To make things worse, we could not rehydrate it like we did with beetles or spiders, since its wings are too fragile and brittle. As a result, the state of the butterfly had a great influence on our casting. It is stiff and hard to maneuver.
Learning about its fragility from our first trial, we decided to try out one-piece mold so as to reduce our direct physical contact with the fragile butterfly to a minimum. Building a V channel on the clay base to serve both as the channel for metal to flow and also to support the butterfly [Fig. 2 V channel on the clay base], we used a pin to carefully pierce the belly of the butterfly and to fix it on the top of the V channel. After that we melted some wax to solidify the joint part between its wings and body [Fig. 3 A fixed butterfly with body parts solidified by wax], since the specimen is rather fragile and the wings falls apart from the body part easily. Since our preceding experiment with wheat oil has failed, we tried melted butter to both lay down the hairy part of its body and to thicken the wings. This turned out to be the most difficult part: to interact with butter. In order to describe the sensory feeling dealing with the butter, we introduce here a section from our field notes:
“Facing the melted yellowish butter in front of me, my mind was actually unsettled. My hands even start to tremble when I recall my last entanglement with butter, when we are molding the pansy. Using a paint brush, I carefully applied the lukewarm butter to the petals of the pansy. Like drawing a painting, brushstroke after brushstroke, the pansy was covered with butter. Then it began to die! The petals failed to withhold the weight of the butter. How frustrated! This time again, I have to face the butter. My last unpleasant encounter with it simply makes me afraid, but I have no other choice. This time, instead of applying the butter brushstroke after brushstroke, which is really time-consuming, I decided to do it fast in order to same time. I dipped my paintbrush into the melted butter for some time and then pull it out. At the end of the brush there is a droplet of butter dangling and swaying. I then placed the brushstroke right beyond the wings of the butterfly, and waited the droplet to fall freely on the wings. Since the wings of the butterfly has a slight slope, the droplet of butter just fell and flew throughout the surface of the wings according to the declivity. The only thing I have to do is to blow the butter to flow more evenly through the surface of the wings and then to absorb redundant butter with paper towel at the lower end of the wings. And it works quite well! I was really excited about that. That moment is like a magic moment for me. It is like a sudden enlightenment disclosed through trials and errors. From this experience I learnt that melted butter has its own life and trajectory, its own agency and habits. When encountering with it, we must try to know more about its life and habit so that we can cooperate with each other.”
The encounter with the melted butterfly in our reconstruction here, is an example to follow the shi of the disposition and the propensity of materials, is to go back to things themselves, is an attempt to reflect on our anthropocentric tendency when interacting with matters. By encountering and interacting with materials, we start to get a sense of intimacy with materials. Materials in our reconstructions are not dead and lifeless things, instead they are vibrant matter.


ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MAKING FIELD NOTES