Butterfly Alphabet

The Butterfly Alphabet is composed of letter shapes found on butterfly wings. Created by nature photographer Kjell B. Sandved, the story goes something like this:

"This most extraordinary discovery began in the attic of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Kjell ('Shell') was balancing high on a ladder, surrounded by drawers and boxes full of exotic butterflies. When he opened an aromatic old Havana cigar box, there it was woven into the tapestry of a wing: a silvery, gleaming letter 'F.'

"'I looked under the microscope at this miniature design,' Kjell recalls, 'and marveled at the scales in soft pastel and sparkling silver. Not even a calligrapher could have improved on its beauty. It reminded me of how the ancient scribes lovingly embellished letters in bibles and illuminated manuscripts with human and animal forms.'"

24 years later he had gathered enough photographs to complete the butterfly alphabet.

Here, from Smithsonian Secretery Emeritus, Robert McC. Adams, is a pivotal insight about Kjell's work: "There's one trait that characterizes our Smithsonian that can't be photographed or printed in a brochure, or placed in a display case. It's that wondrous human characteristic we call enthusiasm. People whose enthusiasm is wonderfully contagious, Smithsonian people like naturalist photographer Kjell Sandved."

And that very wonderful characteristic that Adams calls enthusiasm can only spring from a heart devoted to that which we call "fun."