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William Bache's Silhouettes Album via The National Portrait Gallery [Shared]
William Bache (1771–1845) emigrated from England to Philadelphia in May 1793 with no apparent training as an artist. Yet from 1803 to 1812, he pursued a prolific and successful career as an itinerant maker of silhouette portraits, traveling up and down the eastern seaboard, from Maine to Virginia, and further south to Louisiana and Cuba. Working sporadically over that nine-year period, he produced thousands of shaded profiles with the aid of a patented physiognotrace, a mechanical device used to trace the outline of a person’s face. Cheap and quick to make, silhouettes captured the likenesses of a broad cross-section of society, including those who could afford no other form of portrait.
@douglaswelch The image shows an open book with two pages filled with black silhouettes of human profiles. The silhouettes are arranged in rows and columns, with each profile numbered. The left page contains 18 silhouettes, while the right page has 24. The silhouettes depict a variety of hairstyles and headwear, suggesting different individuals from a past era. The profiles are monochromatic, with the black silhouettes standing out against the aged, yellowed paper background. On the left page, there is a label with the name "John Dixey" and a highlighted silhouette, indicating a specific individual. The silhouettes are detailed, capturing the contours of the faces and hairstyles, providing a glimpse into the fashion and style of the time. The overall appearance of the book suggests it is an old collection, possibly from the 18th or 19th century, used for recording profiles of individuals.
...there's also a tiny Obsidian portal to the Nether dimension in the background.
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