The ''Butterfly Alphabet'' is a photographic artwork by the

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

naturalist

Kjell Bloch Sandved Kjell Bloch Sandved (October 20, 1922 – December 20, 2015) was a Norwegian born publisher, author, lecturer and nature photographer, most known for his Butterfly Alphabet which contains pictures of Butterfly Wings resembling all the 26 letters i ...

. Sandved worked at the Smithsonian's

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, and came up with the idea with

Barbara Bedette Barbara A. Bedette (March 27, 1932 – February 23, 2006) was an American paleontologist. Her creation of 30,860 index cards for Cenozoic molluscs has become invaluable to the field of Atlantic and Gulf Coast Plains fossils studies. Early life Bar ...

, a paleontologist, of finding all 26 letters of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

and the Arabic numerals 0 to 9 in the patterns on the wings of butterflies. Sandved's photographic excursions led him to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, Congo,

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

and the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Searching for the forms took him over 24 years, but he finished the collection in 1975 and published it in the ''

Smithsonian Magazine ''Smithsonian'' is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' mag ...

''. It was republished by Scholastic as a book in 1996, with accompanying snippets about butterfly species.

References

{{reflist

External links

Butterfly Alphabet
Photographic collections and books