Kate Lanigan will create five hand-cut silhouette portraits for you, mounted and matted, but not framed. They will be done from your profile photographs -- no sitting needed.

Silhouette drawing can be traced back as far as the stone age where many can be found on the walls of caves. European silhouette artists in the 17th century would cast the shadow of their subject upon a wall by back lighting them with a candle and then paint their likeness. During the 18th and 19th centuries in America good portrait painters were scarce and their services were often priced out of reach of most settlers. The quickly made, inexpensive silhouettes were well suited to the hard working early settlers, and family portraits were much desired by many as proof of their modest prosperity. Silhouettists have left America with a national heritage of portraiture. Without them the facial likeness of men and women who were important to American history would be completely unknown.