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 enNeffFTea 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 most notably by the Limbourg brothers ~~~ under the plush and glittering umbrella of aristocratic**** patronage*****. The Duc himself was not the artist. No, no. He was the commissioner: the grand organiser, financier, and velvet-gloved instigator of a resolutely fiddly and distributed process of production. This Book of Hours, intended for his personal devotional use, was structured around the paradiddles of prayer. It was an intimate object, a most private instrument of devotion - and, with a teensy weensy cough~belch behind the tapestry, an instrument of inflation too.
@ducdeberrry is a reconfiguration of yon olde situation. This practce swirls into the second quarter of the 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 including a tower trained on THEIR OWN prreecciouusss paintings: WE EE ALSOOO…construct intricate workflows and edit sprawling datasets, attention is unspooled towards all the the 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.
The model outputs --=§=- in turn -=§=— point back at the source material with a long instructive finger. Exposing structural tendencies inside the paintings: unruly depth constrictions, overidexed pattern fixation, colour-field un-relationships, and other small mechanical humours. These discoveries then inform subsequent iterations of paintings and model training, operating as a feedback loop: a two-headed studio 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 the OGDuc, however, this role doesnt 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.
Authorship is therefore r-e-d-i-s-t-r-i—b-u-t-e-d. It does not vanish in a puff of incense. Production, transformation, and selection remain distinct phases, but they are interdependent, knotted together like ribbons round a questionable reliquary. The medieval workshop separated patronage from execution; here those functions are consolidated within a hybrid process spanning paint, computation and dear reader, several vodka cranberries.
So, as we have thus established - the original manuscript was commissioned for the use and possession of a single patron. Dearest Darling its 2026: Scrapbook Illuminations will circulate as an NFT across a m=ul=t=i=tpl=i==c=i=t===y of holders. A g=l=*=i=t=t*e=r=**=in=g s~e~a~ 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 xXcodeXx is shaped in dialogue with that community: their visual literacy, their familiarity with AI image production, 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 it, 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 - and in which ~ ==== incase you havent got it yet ===== ~ the audience itself occupies a patronal role, passing the electric glass candle from hand to lovaged glove in the illuminated murk.