Duc de Berry was first staged as an alt - a powdered little ceremonial envoy, faintly perfumed and carrying a bell - through which to launch Scrapbook Illuminations: an NFT project formally (that is to say, compositionally) arranged after a page from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. A fifteenth-century manuscript produced within a system of workshops, the Duc being himself the commisioner: the grand organiser, financier, and velvet-gloved instigator of a resolutely fiddly distributed process of production. Intended for personal devotional use, books of hours are structured around the rhythms of prayer. An intimate object of some gravitas.
@ducdeberrry is a reconfiguration of yon olde situation. Swirling into the second quarter of 21st century, the division between patron and maker does not stand politely at attention. It buckles, twitches, removes its hat, and reveals another hat. Ducks do not simply prompt Stable Diffusion and await the oracle’s porridge. They use many custom LoRAs, construct intricate workflows and edit sprawling datasets, attention is unspooled towards all gods tiniest weighted morsels. Paintings used for training are naturally produced with this process in mind. Their compositional density, depth, colour relationships, repetitions and surface textures are shaped by close observation of how diffusion models abstract and reconstitute visual information - how they flatten, thicken, sweeten, curdle, and otherwise make a spectacle of form.
Model outputs in turn point back at the source material with a long instructive finger. Exposing structural tendencies inside the paintings: unruly depth constrictions, overindexed pattern fixation, colour-field texture-relations, and other small mechanical humours. These discoveries then inform subsequent iterations of paintings and model training: a two-headed creature, each head garbling into the other’s ear.
Thus, “Duc de Berry” is a procedural role, not merely a mask, not a little theatrical moustache. The phrase designates the act of structuring production: defining parameters, initiating a series, overseeing training, and determining circulation. Unlike my medieval counterpart however, this role doesnt fully circumvent aesthetic labour. The hand that rings the bell mixes the paint, feeds the machine, sorts the harvest, and decides ultimately which strange fruit may remain dancing in the loom.
Dearest Darling its 2026: Scrapbook Illuminations will circulate as an NFT across a multiplicity of holders. A glittering sea of patrons; ownership is no longer singular, seated alone in a chair with a goblet. It is distributed. The anticipated audience - largely artists themselves - informs the work’s formation. The work is shaped in dialogue with that community: their visual literacy, their familiarity with generative systems; with hyper-collage and their position within the same technical and aesthetic field. In this sense, the work is produced partly because of them and partly for them.
Those who collect it do not merely purchase a jpeg, as one might purchase a bun, a cursed vintage button, or a suspicious brass animal. Their mint functions as a form of patronage within the system that produces and sustains the work. The commissioning function shifts from an individual sovereign figure to a networked group whose attention, participation, and acquisition sustain the series. Duc de Berry therefore does not signify ownership in this context. They name a method of organising image production in which commissioning, making, training, and circulation are structurally intertwined. The entire audience (you, dear reader?) occupies a patronal role.