Butter book

My mother once told me a story from her childhood. When she was little, she used to spend her summers in a Latvian village near the Estonian border. Some memories stayed with her – and one of them was about her grandfather, who one day decided they should travel to Estonia to buy some butter. Though butter was available nearby, for them it was all about the excitement of the journey.

He would prepare the carriage, harness the horses, and along the way tell stories about the surrounding villages, paying close attention to the different trees along the road. They stopped to visit a friend, sang songs, and finally reached the border to buy butter from the most dull and unremarkable looking shop. In the end, it wasn’t about the butter at all, but about the journey itself.

Inspired by this story, I rewrote it using butterfat on a piece of paper, which I folded into a butter-sized leporello. It spreads open like butter and, as butter would be, is enclosed in a case made from butter packaging paper.