This has nothing to do with Victorian pictures, but you may be interested
to learn that the Australian War Memorial has two plaited belts made from
butterfly wings encapsulated in cellophane from cigarette packets. Both
belts were made during the Second World War, one by a POW in Malaya, the
other by an Australian in a Forestry Unit in New Guinea. The story goes
that few of these belts came back to Australia because Americans paid such
high prices for them!
Wendy Dodd
Senior Textile Conservator
Australian War Memorial