Recent prints and patterns and calendars!

Since completing my Manufactured Ecosystems show I made one more pollinator. This print shows a great little pollinator in the garden: a transverse-banded flower fly (Eristalis transversa) on Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower. Because of its yellow stripes, tendency to hover (it's a hover fly after all) and love of flowers, this little insect can be mistaken for a bee, but it's a bee-mimic fly. Like the bees, it's an important pollinator and friend to flowers and gardeners. The transverse-banded flower fly and purple coneflowers are native to eastern North America. Each print is made by hand on assorted, beautiful Japanese washi papers and collaged to make the final 8" x 10" image, which are hand-embellished with posca pens.

Transverse-banded flower fly, linocut, 8" x 10" by Ele Willoughby, 2025

I've been delving into surface design, creating all sorts of repeat patterns using my prints. You can find them on fabric and wallpaper in my Spoonflower shop.

Some of my repeat patters: monarch, echinacea and black-eyed susans; clownfish and bubble anemone; radiolarians; velvet worms; crows; heart cockles; diving beetles; humpback whales and T.rex amongst the flowers.

New this year, I decided to make a postcard calendar with my terms of venery prints!

My 2025 Terms of Venery Postcard Desk Calendar! Check it out here.

A note on tariffs:

On August 29, the US removed de minimis exceptions for imports from anywhere. A lot of small businesses worldwide are really struggling to make this work. As a Canadian, the artwork and products I sell are CUSMA-compliant; that is they are tariff-free subject the pre-existing North American free trade agreement. So, buyers in the US should that be hit with unexpected extra fees. That said, there remains a fair bit of uncertainty with how Customs will see with mail or couriered packages. I have not suspended shipments. I can get Delivered Duty Paid service to ensure that buyers don't get a nasty surprise, though I am still figuring out how that works when no Duty was due in the first place.

6th Annual Etsy: Made in Canada Toronto

minouette table at Etsy: Made in Canada Toronto (photo: Peter Power)

This Saturday we held our 6th annual Etsy: Made in Canada Toronto. A huge thank you to all the visitors who came out and stopped by the minouette table at the show! It's great to meet you all in person. As the captain of the Toronto Etsy Street Team, I spent months on this show with a team of organizers from TEST and 416Hustler and it's so gratifying to see thousands of people come out and support local artists and artisans and vintage sellers. Thanks especially to my fellow organizers! I love seeing all my fellow makers too... only being so busy stops me from spending all my earnings at the other tables!

Etsy: Made in Canada Toronto, September 28, 2019 (photo: Peter Power)

Checking out the Newfoundland and Labrador print at Etsy: Made in Canada Toronto (photo: Peter Power)

Ancient Korean Astronomer Queen - Queen Seondeok of Silla

Queen Seondeok of Silla, linocut with chine collé, 9.25" x 12.5", 2019 by Ele Willoughby 

This handprinted lino block print is a portrait of Queen Seondeok of Silla or 선덕여왕 sometimes written Sonduk or Sondok (c. 595 ~ 610 - 647), reigned as 27th ruler of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, from 632-647, who brought about a rise in Buddhism and a renaissance in culture and science as well as building the Cheomseongdae moon and star-gazing observatory. Each print is printed on Japanese papers, and is 12.5 inches by 9.25 inches (31.7 cm by 23.5 cm).

Known for her intelligence, wisdom and benevolence, stories survive of her curiosity and cleverness even as a child. When her father the King was gifted peony seeds and a painting of peonies from China she remarked that it was a pity the lovely flowers had no scent. The astonished adults asked her how she knew; she had noted that the painting of the flower did not show bees or butterflies and had corrected deduced that they were unscented. One story recounts how she predicted an attack from the neighbouring Baekche kingdom by noting the sounds of frogs at the gate. She was introduced to astronomy by her tutor when young.

When her father died without a male heir she became Queen as the first female sovereign in ancient Korea. During this turbulent time, the southern Korean peninsula was divided into three competing kingdoms of Silla, Goguryeo and Baekche and Seondeok was able to combine diplomacy, forging alliances with Tang China, with military might to weather rebellion and threats from other her neighbours during her reign. After lifting peasants’ taxes for a year and helping orphans and elderly, she set to work building a 9m tall moon and star-gazing tower Cheomseogdae. The bottle-shaped stone observatory still survives today, and is the oldest standing observatory in East Asia, and perhaps the world. The capital became a centre of culture and science; mathematics, astronomy and astrology flourished. The observatory is believed to have been the centre of an entire scientific district.

The building itself represented knowledge; the number of stones represents days of the year (scholars differ on whether it contains 362 or 365 large stones representing days in the solar or lunar year). The stones appear in 27 courses (for Seondeok, the 27th ruler) with 12 courses above and below the window entrance for the months of the year and these sum to 24, the number of solar terms in a year (24 points in traditional East Asian lunisolar calendars that matches a particular astronomical event or signifies some natural phenomenon). Including the stylobate, or platform on which it was built, gives 28 courses and 28 symbolizes the 28 constellations of East Asia. The addition of the two-tier top brings us to 30, the number of days in a month. The tower itself is a gnomon of a sundial and the window captures the sun’s rays on the interior floor at spring and autumn equinoxes. Astronomy was of vital importance as it governed agriculture and contemporary scientists produced detailed star charts. Astrology influenced political decisions of the day. Thus observations at Cheomseongdae were of utmost importance to Silla.


References

Hong-Jin Yang, 'Historical Astronomy of Korea', Korean Astronomy Olympiad, Korean Astronomical Society, 2012

K.P.Kulski, 'The Tower of the Moon and Stars: Queen Seondeok of Silla,' Unbound, 2017

Mark Cartwright, Cheomsongdae, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2016

Mark Cartwright, Queen Seondeok, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2016

Queen Seondeok of Silla, wikipedia, accessed August, 2019

Cheomseongdae, wikipedia, accessed August, 2019

Category of Astronomical Heritage: tangible immovableCheomseongdae observatory, Republic of Korea, UNESCO Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy, accessed August, 2019

EDITED on March 9, 2025 to remove one source:

Gabriella Bernardi, 'The unforgotten sisters: Sonduk, the astronomer queen.' Cosmos magazine, 28 March 2018

Some of the information in the article has been linked back to a YA novel (Sŏndŏk: Princess of the Moon and Stars by Sheri Holman (2002)), rather than a factual source, and as such, some of the details were fictionalized. As I found with misinformation which lead to inaccurate information about "Merit Ptah" it is possible that misinformation has made it into English language sources innocently by accident, but there's a strong case that the information is not correct, so I am removing it altogether.  See here for more information.

Minouette at the 5th Etsy: Made in Canada at MaRS Discovery District

Find me at Table 32 at Etsy: Made in Canada, September 29, 2018 (photo credit: Peter Power, 2016 show)

This Saturday, 10 to 6, find me selling at Table 32 for our 5th Annual Etsy: Made in Canada show! This year we have 130 fabulous handmade artists and artisans selling in the airy and history MaRS Discovery District Atrium. I will have a selection of my linocut prints and stuffed toys, with natural history, science prints, and hints of magic! This is always a great show and I hope you'll come join us. Stop by and say hello!

Pink Fairy Armadillo - What the Fukunushi?

Pink fairy armadillo, 11" x 13", multimedia by Ele Willoughby, 2018

I'm taking part in Graven Feather's collaboration with the Japanese Paper Place, the 'What the Fukunishi?' exhibit from March 21 through April 1 at 906 Queen St West, Toronto

Exhibition hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12-6pm & Sunday 12-4pm. Inspired by their description of these rose and pale yellow fukunishi papers as being "an excellent support material for a huge variety of medias and techniques" I decided to mix it up. This piece combines linocut, collage and colour pencil to show the adorable sand swimmer, the pink fairy armadillo, a tiny armoured mammal, also known as a pichiciego or Chlamyphorus truncatus, who lives in desserts or xerix scrublands of central Argentina. These uncommon tiny armadillos are only 90–115 mm (3.5–4.5 in) long, subterranean and nocturnal. They are rarely seen and their numbers are declining, due to farming, hunting and predation from domestic pets. Sadly they do not survive long in captivity. Its giant forepaws allow it to dig its burrow and explain it's nickname, the "sand-swimmer". 

 

You can also find a series of prints in my shop of just the animal itself.

 

Pink Fairy Armadillo I, linocut and collage on washi paper, 12" x 8", Ele Willoughby, 2018

 

Dinovember and One of a Kind and Scienterrific and the TEST Christmas Market

Well November is always a busy time of year! This year I also curated and showed in DINOVEMBER, November 4 to 14, a dinosaur themed art show at the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery! We had a number of fun and beautiful works including painting, printmaking and scupture; jewellery, housewares, cards and toys. Peggy Muddles of the vexed muddler outdid herself, with a large ceramic dinosaur heart (with anatomy inferred from modern-day bird and reptile hearts) with Cretaceous flora and fauna (palms, grains, mosses, and butterflies) which used a proximity sensor to trigger the playing of a sound file (a composition of electronic music inspired by the time period).

Fossil amonnite ring by Slashpile Designs

Terra Incognita by PaperParadigm

Dinosaur planters from
Sonic Bloom

Watercolour whimsical dinosaurs from Deirdre Wicks of Water in my Paint

Screenprinted T. rexes on paper and as stuffed animals by sunandstarsco

Dinosaur heart multimedia sculpture by the vexed muddler

Linocut dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures from minouette

The One of a Kind Show (November 23 to December 3) while always a bit of a marathon for handmakers selling their work, felt like it went faster than in previous years. I debuted my new booth, built by my husband. It's always great to see the "travelling circus" of artists and artisans again. Thank you very much to everyone who came out, helped me, said hello or purchased art!

The next weekend, Peggy Muddles hosted a Scienterrific #sciart pop-up market at the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery. Cause she's the best, she let me set-up and abandon my art work there and she sold it on my behalf. I was busy celebrating my son's 4th birthday! His actual birthday was during the One of a Kind, but we opted for the sane plan of delaying the party until afterwards. As one maker friend put it, "Throwing a birthday party during OOAK is like throwing a wedding while at the Olympics!"

Then last weekend was the always-fun Toronto Etsy Street Team Christmas Market at St Stephens-in-the-Fields church in Kensington Market. We had Krampus and Santa visit - as well as an unscheduled visit from the Toronto Fire Department, conveniently from the fire hall across the street due to an alarm! Thank you very much to everyone who came out. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.... but am thankful to be done with all shows and exhibits for 2017. Now I'm going to make some cookies and relax.

UnNatural History

My linocut imaginary menagerie: Snowflake beetles, Chrysanthemum snake, Elusive Cactibou, Iceberg Squid, Batbearoo, Hammerhead Hedgehorse, Duck-billed Deer, Winged Walrus, Mandriltee and Aeolian Jellyfish

 Last Friday, the 13th, was the Opening for 'UnNatural History', curated by Tosca Terán at the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery. There were costumes, Tarot readings, and prizes along with a fascinating show of art from 14 artists from Canada, the US, Iceland and Hungary. Works include painting, printmaking, multimedia, photography, bookbinding and sculpture and explore real and imaginary life forms and landscapes.

 This month and for the first two days of November, there gallerywill also host a series of workshops, from creating with thermoplastic, to bat skeleton articulation to decorating sugar skills to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. Find out more on the blog and come see the show while you can!

Paintings by Kristen D'Aquila

Photographs of marine plants and animals in multimedia light boxes by Holly McClellan

Sculptures with detail of one of the sculptures, and what lurks inside, by Lavinia Hanachiuc

Photographic sculptures of landscapes by Mar Hester

Hand-stitched, collaged animal illustrations by Judith Pudden

Multimedia by Kest Schwartzman, including cicadas, butterflies and a bat in metal masks and costumes

Kest Schwartzman

Kest Schwartzman

painting by Rosemary Stehlik

Photos by Wilder Duncan and Ralph Smith. Wilder, who is teaching the bat skeleton articulation workshop and does rogue taxidermy, arranges the bones he works with, in paterns like mandalas or geometric shapes and collaborated with still life photographer Smith

Pati Tozer's miniature etchings and hand-bound book, between Schwartzman's cicadas and D'Aquila's paintings

wundercabinet of beaded specimen by Cynthia Winders

Tosca Terán, glass sculptures with wool, moss and lichen, shaped like plankton

Images are 'Ambient Plague' by Elaine Whittaker about microbes around us. Bone sculptures by Tosca Terán, and figurines by Kathryn Bell

Peacock Spider

Peacock Spider, linocut 8" x 8", Ele Willoughby, 2017

I confess I have mixed feelings about spiders. Generally, I leave them to mind their own business. But, I follow a lot of scicomm (you know, science communication) and seem to have fallen in with a bunch of very friendly Twitter entomologists. They're a subset of the biologists. For information and contagious enthusiasm for spiders, I recommend @Cataranea. As a result I consume a lot of science journalism and learn about a wider variety of creatures than I would have known existed. So, somewhere I stumbled upon the peacock spiders, and these are a group of spiders that you can't possibly fear. For one thing, they are beautiful. For another, they dance. This is a hand-printed lino block print of the colourful Australian Coastal Peacock Spider, Maratus Speciosus. Like the name suggests, peacock spiders have vivid, patterned, multicolour abdomens (and that round opisthosomal plate) which males lift and shake, along with their third pair of legs, during a courtship display. That is, much like peacocks, the males do a fancy dance to impress the lady spiders! Unlike other peacock spiders, the males of the Maratus Speciosus also have a set of bright orange hairs (setae) along both edges of the opisthosomal plate, only visible during the courtship display, as shown in this print.

This is one of an edition of 18, printed in browns, blue, turquoise, and orange on white handmade Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper, 8" x 8" (or 20.3 cm by 20.3 cm).

In a recently delightful science communication exchange amongst scientists on Twitter, spider specialists identified the mysterious jumping spiders raining down in an astronomer's office. One mentioned that their amazing eye tubes actually function like Galileo's telescope! Before you knew it astronomers were doing some quick calculations and together they made realization that jumping spiders can see the moon! (You can read more by great science journalist Ed Yong in the Atlantic). The funny thing for me was I read this exchange while it was happening and I wasn't sure it it appeared on my feed because of the astronomers or the entomologists I follow. I've seen it claimed that Twitter scicomm is "inside baseball" with scientists communication amongst ourselves. My own experience is more "baseball adjacent" if you will. Most people are involved in science in some way, but networks are much broader than traditional scientific networks within a field of study and there is the posibility for great cross-pollination like this whimsical story.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, linocut by Ele Willoughby

Happy birthday to astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) who set the scale of the universe when she found the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variable stars. These pulsing stars in the Cepheid constellation (shown) can be used as "standard candles" allowing astronomers to determine distances to celestial bodies. 

This entire month, we're hosting Canada 150+ at the Toronto Etsy Street Team gallery, with a brief, but cool hiatus this week hosted by Tosca Teran, with events for a book launch of Suffed - Taxidermy for a New Generation by Divya Anantharaman & Katie Innamorato. On Thursday there will be the Carnival of Taxidermy book signing, 5 pm to midnight. Friday through Sunday there will be a series of related workshops (Entomology 101: Morphos & Jewel Beetles, 2- headed Chick Taxidermy and Fascinator/Wearable Taxidermy- check her site for availability).  If you come by you can see my prints of Canadian provinces and territories and all sorts of art and handmade goods. 

 

What makes minouette different?

I've decided to enter the #EtsySmallBusiness #DifferenceMakesUs contest! The Canadian winner (with the most votes) gets $13,000 to scale their business. I'm pitching my story as marine geophysicist/printmaker making science art as what makes me unique. Please take a moment to vote for me here!