Red Spotted Purple Necklace

The Red Spotted Purple fore wing has an amazing array of iridescent colors.  Blue-green against coal black with large orange spots.  Orange and white dashes in the margin.  The Red-Spotted Purple mimics the Pipevine Swallowtails, thus gaining protection from birds.

pendant - appoximately 1 1/2"

adjustable black cord

May Swenson mentions it in her poem Unconscious Came A Beauty:

                         Unconscious                               U
                  came a beauty to my                         n
               wrist                                                    c
              and stopped my pencil,                         o
         merged its shadow profile with                   n
      my hand's ghost                                            s
   on the page:                                                     c
   Red Spotted Purple or else Mourning               i
Cloak,                                                                o
paired thin-as-paper wings, near black,               u
were edged on the seam side poppy orange,        s
  as were its spots.                                                        

           C a m e  a  B e a u t y

 I sat arrested, for its soot-haired
 body's worm
 shone in the sun.
 It bent its tongue long as
  a leg
  black on my skin
    and clung without my
    feeling,
     while its tomb-stained
        duplicate parts of
          a window opened.
           And then I
              moved.