They have been called many names - black profiles, shades, scissargraphs, sissartypes, papyrolomias, and finally, as we have come to know them, silhouettes.
An enduring craft that came into popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century, it is currently practiced with precision and skill by Kaye Housel. The seventy-three-year-old Housel has been cutting silhouettes at her home and studio in Rangeley, Maine, for twenty-one years. The Housels, Kaye and her husband Dale, who complements her finished products with his matting and framing talents, were in the process of packing up their Rangeley home when I met with them. They were moving to what had previously been their winter residence in Elberta, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast.
Though their residence was changing, and boxes were packed and lined up against the pine-paneled walls, Kaye's continuing involvement with her craft of forty years was certainly not being left behind. She seemed as excited about making silhouettes and talking about them as one who had recently begun a new interest.
"I began forty years ago this past Halloween. I started it for a Halloween carnival at my children's school. I had never cut silhouettes before. When I started to think about black and orange for Halloween, silhouettes popped into my head, and I thought maybe I could cut silhouettes. On Halloween night, with another mother accompanying me to paste them, I began. It turned out to be a very popular part of the carnival."
Hobby becomes Occupation
What began quite innocently with the household scissors and black construction paper pasted to an orange background evolved into the Housels' livelihood. Kaye estimates making over 300,000 silhouettes. In addition to working from her homes, she has traveled throughout the United States, including Hawaii, and also to New Zealand, Australia, and Tahiti. Housel said she feels equally comfortable working in her home and studio as she does on the road. She has been invited to cut silhouettes in places as diverse as the cruise ship North American, community church fairs, promotions for major department stores, or simply rescuing a child's rainy-day birthday party.
The simplicity of her craft allows for mobility and the striking purity of her work. Perhaps this quality and the elusiveness of the silhouette image account for its endurance. Even in this age of instant Polaroid portraiture and the ease of making home videos, the craft of silhouette cutting has remained popular. Add to this a bit of nostalgia and one easily begins to understand the present-day appeal of this early craft.
There is no certainty about when the first silhouette appeared, or who may have cut it. The traces of silhouettes are believed to reach far back into history - well beyond the popularity they received in the eighteenth century. Silhouettes have been linked to the black profile figures on Etruscan pottery and to the tradition of the shadow puppet theater of the Far East.
However one draws that line, silhouettes experienced their celebrated era in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were most popular in Germany, France, and England. It is widely believed a cutter
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