This is a vessel where I wanted to display one of our most beautiful small, winged creatures, a monarch butterfly. The vessel itself has a bottom section of padauk, a very reddish hardwood, and a top section of walnut. I turned the sides to be concave mainly because I like the look of the vessel fanning out as it reaches the top. The challenging part is in the lid, which has the butterfly. The lid is walnut, and continues the fan out of the vessel. The butterfly involves a lot of scroll saw work. The wings, which mimic the monarch, are made of cherry and more padauk using marquetry, a scroll technique for forming pictures from wood. I have added white dots to the wings, similar to what monarchs actually have. The butterfly body is a small walnut spindle turning which I then ebonized. A couple of antennae finish it off. The butterfly is fastened to the lid with a leopardwood piece that is meant to look like a milkweed pod. A satin polyurethane finish is applied to all pieces.