Silhouette art is a very old craft and was very popular during the colonial era. Proof of that is that George Washington had several silhouettes made of himself. And aren't we glad he did? All of us would readily recognize the sloping forehead, pointed nose and pigtail of the father of our country.
It was during the period of his lifetime that silhouettes enjoyed their greatest popularity and were much used because they were so easily executed and copied and could be exchanged with loved ones and small enough to send by post to distant friends and relatives.
General Lafayette, a Frenchman who fought during the American Revolution, had a silhouette cutter that he took with him wherever he traveled. Thomas Jefferson had a very high regard for silhouettes. The library of his beloved home Monticello is covered with framed tiny black paper profiles of Indian savages, heads of state and the lovely ladies that he so much admired.
And while silhouettes were so popular in this country during the colonial period they were an absolute craze in Europe. As a matter of fact, the name silhouette comes from Etienne Silhouette, the French minister of Finance to King Louis XVI of France, whose favorite pastime was to cut silhouettes of the French nobility. The Germans, Austrians and Russians had a fetish for them. The philosopher Goethe had his own silhouette cutter, and Europeans eager to have their individual profiles published and interpreted by a priest from Zurich, named Lavatier, made having their own profile made an absolute must.
Everywhere during that period the pantographs (a primitive contraption used to copy and reduce shadows) were busy, and it would not be extraordinary if you were living in the last half of the eighteenth century to know of a family member or friend who took up the craft of scissor cuts to pass the time making attempts to cut individual's profiles. As a matter of fact, the silhouette of George and Martha Washington, on the left, were cut by George and Martha's niece, Nellie Curtis.