A fun project.....

I love silhouettes! A few years ago, I found these two reproduction Georgian silhouettes in a little shop in The Cotswolds. They were not cheap to purchase then but have become very expensive. I keep looking at them on eBay but they all go up too high. I felt like these two are so lonely and needed to get some more.


While in Brugge, I bought a beautiful black frame. I started thinking that a silhouette would look so lovely in it. So for a fun project, I copied this image of what is reputed to be a silhouette of Jane Austen onto thick, textured paper. I then tea dyed the image being sure to do the staining twice so it would become very splotched. I am so happy with the results. This made having more silhouettes an attainable thing.

I will be shopping for more of these ornate black frames for more silhouette portraits.


For my guest room, I wanted to put a silhouette in a pretty frame I received at the Christmas gift swap with my quilt group ladies. I know which silhouette I would use for here...Charlotte Bronte. For this one, I kept the paper white as it works well in this frame and in the room itself.


While looking into some images to copy, I started reading sites about the history of silhouettes. It was very interesting to find out that the name comes from Etienne de Silhouette (1706-67), French Minister of Finance under Louis XV. He created shadowed portraits as a hobby. Later, they were named after him.