Caroline Shawk Brooks

Caroline Shawk Brooks
Caroline Shawk Brooks with one of her butter sculptures at Amory Hall in 1877
Born	Caroline Shawk (1840-04-28)April 28, 1840 Cincinnati, Ohio
Died	1913 (aged 72–73) St. Louis, Missouri
Nationality	American
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Dreaming Iolanthe
Spouse(s)	Samuel H. Brooks

Caroline Shawk Brooks (April 28, 1840 – 1913) was an American sculptor. Most famous for her work sculpting in the medium of butter, she also worked with more traditional materials such as marble.

Caroline Shawk was born on April 28, 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Abel Shawk, manufactured fire engines and steam locomotives, and invented a fire engine – the first successful one which was powered by steam. She showed her artistic talents as a young child, enjoying painting and drawing. Her first sculpting project, modeled in clay from a creek, was Dante's head. At the age of twelve, she won a medal for her wax flowers. She graduated from the St. Louis Normal School in 1862, and later that year married railroad worker Samuel H. Brooks. The Brookses initially lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where Samuel's railroad job was located. They later lived in Mississippi for a short time, before moving in 1866 to a farm near Helena, in Phillips County, Arkansas. The couple had one child, a daughter named Mildred.

Brooks was the first known American sculptor working in the medium of butter, and she would come to be identified as "The Butter Woman". In 1867, she created her first butter sculpture, when, after the failure of the farm's cotton crop, she sought a source of supplemental income. Farm women of the time often created decoratively shaped butter using butter molds, but rather than molding, Brooks sculpted the butter into shapes such as shells, animals, and faces. Rather than traditional sculpting tools, she used "common butter-paddles, cedar sticks, broom straws and camel's-hair pencils". Her customers appreciated the skillfully sculpted butter, and there was a good market for her works. She continued producing her butter sculptures for about a year and a half, then took a break from it for a few years.

She resumed making butter art in 1873, when she created a bas-relief portrait, which she donated to a church fair. Her husband safely transported it, on horseback, the seven miles to the fair. The sale of the portrait earned the church enough money to fix their roof. A Memphis man who saw Brooks's work there admired it so much that he arranged for her to create a butter portrait, of Mary, Queen of Scots, to be displayed in his offices.