What a bovine day, Chicago.
You might remember that cows — the fiberglass kind — took over downtown Chicago in the summer of 1999.
But, did you know, the Illinois State Fair has its own in-cow-ceivable mascot? A lifesize, hand-sculpted replica of a dairy cow — made entirely out of hundreds of pounds of butter.
It’s a tradition that goes back at least a century, though organizers don’t think it could have started much prior to 1922, “because there wasn’t refrigeration available to keep a butter statue from turning into a butter puddle in summer heat,” the Tribune reported in 1997.
And in the field of butter sculpting, there was a clear queen — Norma “Duffy” Lyon. Her family was Iowa State Fair royalty — her uncle, Phil Song, wrote the 1932 novel “State Fair” about it, according to The Washington Post.
Lyon crafted a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a bust of President Barack Obama and even a full-size replica of “The Last Supper” out of the medium. Though she made her home in Iowa, she often traveled to Illinois to create the state’s official butter cow before her retirement in 2006.
Sarah Pratt, Lyon’s protege, carries on the tradition, as my colleague Jake Sheridan discovered.
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‘As a dairy farmer’s wife I know where all the bumps and curves are on a cow’
Lyon used more than 300 pounds of butter for her Illinois State Fair butter cow in 1970, the first year the Tribune interviewed her about her work. Read more.
Norma ‘Duffy’ Lyon: Sculptor of Illinois State Fair butter cows gets a pat on the back
At the Iowa State Fair one year, she saw a butter cow that didn’t look right. Lyon said she could do better. So in 1960, 7 1/2 months’ pregnant with the seventh of her nine children, she helped with her first cow. Read more.
No margarine for error — when butter sculptress is unavailable
“I was in a panic,” says Dick Moore, manager of the Dairy Building. “I mean, who are you going to find to turn 600 pounds of butter into a cow at this late date?”
Lyon suffered a mild stroke earlier that summer and couldn’t complete the Illinois State Fair’s butter cow. So a butter sculptor from Detroit mobilized his “Butter Cow Team.”
Yet, the result was substandard.
“The milk vein. It’s definitely different,” said a critical Ron Wolf, a Downstate farmer and former dairy cattle competition judge who checked on the cow. Read more.
Storm kills power, but not state fair’s butter cow mascot
When a rainstorm knocked out the power at the Illinois State Fair in 2005, the first concern was the butter cow. Read more.
Norma ‘Duffy’ Lyon (1929-2011)
While Lyon wasn’t the genesis of the butter cow, she did expand the medium during her time as a butter sculptor for the state fair, much to the delight of fairgoers. Read more.
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