Charlotte A Cavatica

Humble barn dweller

– legs aplenty, catching flies

spinning silken tales

Notes on the process: I am grateful to work at a University with such an amazing library, including a phenomenal division of Rare Books and Special Collections. In that division, there are also printing presses (the Book Arts lab) and they have a print-shop for special projects. Back in the late summer, the former Trenholme Dean of Libraries suggested I undertake a collaboration and create some spider-themed art and haiku and see about getting prints done. This came to fruition last week, and the end product is above. I did the art as a simple black and white line-drawing of a barn spider, and the Haiku was inspired by Charlotte’s Web (see below) – my colleagues in the library generously got a plate made of the spider drawing, and helped typeset the Haiku, and I was able to work with them to print off a dozen or so prints. We selected sepia as the ink colour – but so many options were available! A few photos of the process are below. What fun! And I am so thankful to the team who helped me with this (especially Lauren).

Notes on the art: Charlotte’s Web is a very well known children’s story by EB White. Archnophiles (like me) like to dig deeper into the story and see whether or not EB White was accurate in the depiction of Charlotte, the spider who saves the day. You might recall that the full name of the spider is Charlotte A. Cavatica – and is modelled after the ‘barn spider’. The scientific name of that species is Araneus cavaticus. So, well done, EB White! My illustration above does hopefully have a likeness to the barn spider. EB White got her basic biology and life cycle correct too (Charlotte doesn’t live that long, and lays eggs in late summer, the egg sac overwinters, etc). Very impressive. Charlotte wrote a lot of words in her web, including Humble. The Haiku is therefore trying to capture elements of Charlotte’s Web, and capture elements of her natural history.

Notes on next steps: What shall I do with the prints? The plate is now housed at the Library and there will be opportunities in the future to do more prints – I can select other font types or sizes, other ink colours, or even options to use multiple ink colours! What fun! Please let me know your ideas for next steps with this printing press project. I feel that it’s just the beginning.

© Christopher M Buddle 2023