Carolien is a versatile, creative artist with an enormous love for fashion and styling. As a child she dreamed of a future in the creative industry. Her knowledge, experience and creativity in the field of taxidermy, styling, craft and design advice all come together in her work.
Her whole life Carolien has been inspired by the inner beauty of butterflies, their shapes, their colors and their vulnerability. For her as a taxidermist working with butterflies started as a hobby but over the years it became her passion.
With her love and eye for details she always tries to bring the butterflies back to life translated in beautiful stories or themes, using the finest materials and the newest technics.
In spiritual meaning the butterfly stands for change, freedom, love and transformation in the quality of life. To Carolien butterflies represent the blooming of the spiritual quality of life.
Therefore, she feels it’s more than a privilege to work with them and turn their stories into an artform, bringing them back to life.
All of the insect specimens Madame Butterfly works with are raised on farms which help to preserve the valuable rainforest habitat by providing villagers an ethical income other than clearing virgin tropical rainforest. Raising insects to sell is sometimes the only incentive some indigenous people have to save the environment they live in.
To make a living the indigenous people can either poach in the rainforest or sell their land for retrieving palm oil. In both cases the rainforest isn’t preserved. With the farms there’s an incentive to preserve the rainforest because the farms need the flora and fauna of the rainforest. You can’t farm butterflies without their natural habitat. The specimens are from butterfly and insect farms in Central and Southern America rainforest areas which breed for insect collectors around the world.
The fact is, buying tropical insects for collections may be the best investment anyone makes in tropical forest protection. Villagers use butterflies, and sometimes other insects, from their farms in the forests to sell. Or they plant caterpillar food plants and sell the adult butterflies that develop on those “extra” food plants (a process known as “butterfly ranching.”) Villagers realize that the forest can be a continual source of income. Where poaching or selling land only generates short term income.
The continual source of income gives them great incentive to protect their areas. Money earned pays for children’s schooling, medicine, and simple living needs. They now have cash crops of butterflies which does not require forests clearing and land destruction. On the contrary: they need to preserve the tropical forest to maintain their income.
Butterflies live their entire lifespan on these rainforest farms and produce eggs for the next generation. In the wild, less than 7% of butterfly eggs will survive to adulthood. In contrast, captive breeding programs on butterfly farms achieve 95% survival rates. The farms also release up to 20% of all the generation back into the wild helping to preserve the insects in their natural habitat.
Virgin tropical forests are declining at an alarming rate – over half have been cleared in the last 40 years. The case for saving tropical forests is clear. Support comes from buying sensible products of the rainforest.
Madame Butterfly is a member of IABES. https://www.iabes.org
Madame Butterfly doesn’t use endangered species.
Carolien is a versatile, creative artist with an enormous love for nature and butterflies.
Carolien Bosch 2025 | Terms & Conditions
