55th Annual Delaware Show

format. The Coates collection also includes examples of a different sort of silhouette: the scherenschnitte, an art form in which detailed compositions are extracted from paper using only scissors and imagination. A rather elaborate one shows two houses on either side of a stream spanned by a bridge. Two men in a boat and a third approaching on horseback populate the bucolic scene (fig. 8). Fig. 8. Detail of scherenschnitte from the Coates family silhouette collection, Philadelphia, 1800−1825. Winterthur Library Doc. 139 As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth, silhouettes began to appear in increasingly diverse and playful contexts: as illustrations in children’s books, instructions for creating shadow plays, and book cover design. We encourage you to keep an eye out as you browse through the 2018 Delaware Antiques Show. You will certainly find portrait silhouettes and weathervanes, but you may also see chair splats that form the outline of a vase; delicate florals floating on the surface of cameo glass; and striking early twentieth-century posters, book covers, and wallpaper ― all of which cleverly employ the silhouette (figs. 9, 10). Fig. 9. Cover. From Hans Andersen, Fairy Tales (New York: G. H. Doran, ca. 1924). Winterthur Library PZ8 A54f — 32 —