That same Queen of Hearts, who baked all those tarts That we've heard of in story and fable Sent word once a year, that both peasant and peer Should collect all the hearts they were able And some hearts were great, and some hearts were small And some had hardly a heart at all.
These silhouettes (cut from black paper for decorating windows or cut from white paper for decorative borders) are made by folding a sheet of paper into three sections as show below. The folded sections are then folded once more to make three sections of equal size. Sketches for the silhouettes should be made twice the width and exactly the height of the paper in its final fold. When satisfactory sketches are completed and after care has been taken to have them symmetrical and with no cutting to be done through the lefthand folds of the paper, one half of the sketch (vertically) should be sketched or traced on the folded paper and cut out.
Students will need either black, white, or orange construction paper and a pair of scissors to assemble this paper Halloween craft.
Illustrated below are two simple methods for cutting and assembling paper Halloween lanterns for the classroom. Included also are a few simple silhouettes that students may copy to emphasize the theme: a black cat, a black bat, a witch with a cane and Jack-o-lantern.
Students will need black construction paper, scissors, a ruler and glue to complete these projects.
Above are jigging (dancing) pigs and below is a single paper cut pig with a turnip. Have fun including these silhouettes in your crafts for the classroom!
I will collect for this post, those few St. Patrick's Day paper cuts that I happen across in the archives. So far there are: angelic harps, a vintage pipe with shamrocks and a rabbit nibbling on a piece of clover.
St. Patrick Silhouettes for the classroom and child paper crafts.
Paper mini book by Harvey Peake, restored by kathy grimm. Front Cover
This adorable mini book is by Harvey Peake. It comes with rhymes and illustrations of automobiles only found in the imagination of a child. Assemble it as a mini book or cut the patterns out and pin them into a boarder in your classroom. Either way, little ones are sure to enjoy coloring them in and learning their nursery rhymes.
Goosey, goosey gander
Whither do you wander?
Of your winged motor car
Are you growing fonder?
A frog he would a-wooing go
In a very stylish way,
So he bought a frogmobile, you know,
And the lady frog said "Yea!"
Jack be nimble!
Jack be quick!
Jack, jump over the candlestick!
Jack jumped when something
struck his wheel,
For his candlestick
was an automo-
bile!
The Man in the Moon,
Come down too soon,
And asked his way to Norwich.
In his crescent machine,
Made of cheese so green,
He drove off after his porridge.
Little Bo Peep had lost her sheep,
And didn't know where to find them;
But she turned them all to automobiles,
And now she rides behind them.
"Will you come into my auto?"
Said the spider to the fly.
"There is room in my Web-tonneau
And I'll join you by and by."
There was an old woman
Who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children
She didn't know what to do.
But she mounted the shoe
On a big motor car,
And now there is room
For them all without jar.
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her;
He made a car of the pumpkin shess,
And there he kept her very well.
There was an old woman lived under a hill
On auto'bile wheels that wouldn't stand still.
So she drove around selling her cranberry pies,-
And she's the old woman who never told lies.
"Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?''
"Oh, now that I have a car," she said,
"It grows twice as fast, you know."
Here is a unique set of silhouettes or paper cuts of a Mother Goose Rhyme, "Old Mother Hubbard" done up in a Japanese motif. The silhouettes are mounted on top of an ancient Japanese kimono design.
Shadowgraphy has progressed a long way from the rabbit on the wall; but in the house, ambition in this accomplishment does not often extend further than that and one or two other animals, and this is why only the rabbit, dog and swan are given here. The swan can be made more interesting by moving the arm which forms his neck as if he were prinking and pluming, an effect which is much heightened by ruffling up and smoothing down the hair with the fingers forming his beak. To get a clear shadow it is necessary to have only one light, and that fairly close to the hands.
This illustration show the positioning of the hands to make a bunny, swan and dog.
In the modern age, when photographic art has achieved so high a
degree of perfection, most people do not stop to think that less than a
century ago there did not exist any photographer at all. When our
ancestors wanted to have a portrait made they had a limited choice of
methods. They could have it painted, very circumstantially, in colors,
for one thing; or they could content themselves with a silhouette, cut
out of black paper. Of course, the latter method was the cheaper, and
subsequently it became highly popular, until photography was invented.
The word silhouette, which has been merged with most languages,
was at first meant as an expression of contempt for the French
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Etienne de Silhouette,
who instead of adjusting the money affairs of his country, spent his
time in decorating the walls of his castle with shadow portraits of his
guests. The French people said that "his pictures were just as black and
empty as the French Treasury." Since that time black portraits of this
kind have been called "silhouettes."
Years before the German scientist Lavater
had occupied himself with drawing profiles. With the help of a wax
candle he produced a shadow of his subject in full size on a white
sheet, on which he then traced the outline. Later he reproduced the
picture on a smaller scale, and the portrait was finished.
The correct way of taking a silhouette is however, to cut it out
of black paper by hand. It requires a great deal of mechanical skill,
but at the same time a beautiful result can be accomplished when a
clever person wields the shears.
In the nineteenth century it was quite an industry to clip
silhouettes. One single man, August Edouart, who lived most of the time
in America, cut out nearly 100,000 portraits, and still he was one of
the few who understood how to give the silhouettes the true imprint of
real art.
The greatest genius in the field of this special branch of art who
ever lived was Paul Konewka. Although he died when only 31 years old he
developed such dexterity in silhouette cutting that he became known all
over the world. He combined a fine decorative sense with wonderful
adroitness in the use of scissors. He always carried with him a pair of
scissors especially constructed for this use, and he cut with such
deftness that he never needed to look at the scissors.
The most celebrated among his silhouettes are the illustrations of
"Faust" and Shakespear's dramas. His figures are so charming, his
portraits so animated, that even the most particular critics must yield
them admiration. In any case, this black art has fostered one great
master, has given lasting fame to at least one name -- Paul Konewka.
There is more than one way to display Scherenshnitte or paper cuts. Traditionally scherenshnitte have been preserved either in old scrapbook collections, under glass in traditional frames for display or as ornamentation for holidays. I have linked to a few interesting articles that my visitors can look at in order to get some less traditional ideas about how they might display their own designs here.
Framing scherenschnitte in untraditional ways.
Anatassia Elias displays her unique paper cuts inside paper toilet tubes.
An accordion cut scherenschnitte stands on it's own.
Auguste Amant Constant Fidèle Edouart (1789–1861) was a
French-born portrait artist who worked in England, Scotland and the
United States in the 19th-century. He specialized in silhouette portraits.
"Born in Dunkerque,
he left France in 1814, and established himself in London, where he
began his career making portraits from hair. In 1825, he began work as a
silhouette portraitist, taking full-length likenesses in profile by
cutting out black paper with scissors. Edouart spent fifteen years
touring England and in 1829 arrived in Edinburgh. He remained there for three years, during which time he produced some five thousand likenesses." Edouart travelled in the United States ca.1839-1849, visiting New York, Boston,
and other locales. He later returned to France where he worked on
smaller silhouettes. They included one of the most notable writer of
this period, Victor Hugo.
Old Silhouette Present To Taft
Paper Likeness of President Tyler Made by Artist Edouart in 1841.
Washington, June 28. --Mrs. E. Nowell Jackson, related to President Tyler, has presented to President Taft the original silhouette portrait of President Tyler, made by the artist, Auguste Edouart, in Washington, in 1841. It will be placed in the White House collection of presidential portraits.
Mrs. Jackson has always been interested in silhouettes, the old black profile portraits of the eighteenth century.
Six years ago she picked up a rare treatise on the art written by Auguste Edouart, a Frenchman, who toured in Great Britain and the United States, and cut the picture in black paper of every king, queen, princess, president and senator in any town he visited.
I've restored the silhouette to a facsimile from the very tiny version you see in a photo scan of the original newspaper.
Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (June 2, 1899 – June 19, 1981) was a German silhouette animator and film director. She was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, German Empire, on June 2, 1899. As a child, she was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, even building her own puppet theater so that she could put on shows for her family and friends.
As a teenager, Reiniger fell in love with cinema, first with the films of Georges Méliès for their special effects, then the films of actor and director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem (1920). In 1915, the young woman attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the fantastic possibilities of animation.
After a bit of persuasion, she convinced her parents to enroll her in the acting group Wegener belonged to, the Theater of Max Reinhardt.
In an attempt to attract the attention of her distant and very-busy
hero, she started making silhouette portraits of the various actors
around her. This had its desired effect, and soon she was making
elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured
silhouettes.
In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles for Wegener's Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (The Pied Piper of Hamelin).
The success of this work got her admitted into the Institut für
Kulturforschung (Institute for Cultural Research), an experimental
animation and shortfilm studio. It was here that she met her future
creative partner and husband (from 1921), Carl Koch, as well as other avant-garde artists such as Hans Cürlis, Bertolt Brecht, Berthold Bartosch, and others.
The first film Reiniger directed was Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The Ornament of the Enamoured Heart,
1919), a short piece involving two lovers and an ornament that
reflected their moods. The film was very well received. She made six
short films during the following few years, all produced and
photographed by her husband. These were interspersed with advertising
films (the Julius Pinschewer advertising agency invented ad films and
sponsored a large number of abstract animators during the Weimar period) and special effects for various feature films – most famously a silhouette falcon for a dream sequence in Part One of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen). During this period she became the centre of a large group of ambitious German animators, such as Bartosch, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger.
The Art of Lotte Reiniger, 1970 from the Met.
In 1923, a unique opportunity came her way. She was approaced by
Louis Hagen, who had bought a large quantity of raw film stock as an
investment to fight the spiraling inflation of the period, who asked her
to do a feature length animated film. The result was The Adventures of Prince Achmed, completed in 1926, the first animated feature film, with a plot that is a pastiche of stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Although it failed to a find a distributor for almost a year, once premiered in Paris (thanks to the support of Jean Renoir), it then became a critical and popular success.
Reiniger anticipated Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks by a decade by devising the first multi-plane camera for certain effects. In addition to Reiniger's silhouette actors, Prince Achmed boasted dream-like backgrounds by Walter Ruttmann (her partner in the Die Nibelungen sequence) and a symphonic score by Wolfgang Zeller. Additional effects were added by Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch.
The success of Prince Achmed meant that Lotte Reiniger would not need a stroke of luck to make a second feature. Doktor Dolittle und seine Tiere (Doctor Dolittle and his Animals, 1928) was based on the first of the English children's books by Hugh Lofting. The score of this three-part film this time was composed by Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith and Paul Dessau.
A year later, Reiniger co-directed her first live-action film with Rochus Gliese, Die Jagd nach dem Glück (The Pursuit of Happiness, 1929), a tale about a shadow-puppet troupe. The film starred Jean Renoir
and Bertold Bartosch and included a 20-minute silhouette performance by
Reiniger. Unfortunately, the film was completed just as sound came to
Germany, and release of the film was delayed until 1930 to dub in voices
by different actors – the result being so unsuccessful as to ruin any
enjoyment of the film.
Reiniger also attempted to make a third animated feature, based on Maurice Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Bewitched Things, 1925), but found herself unable to clear the rights for the music with an unexpected number of copyright holders. She worked with British poet, critic, and musician Eric Walter White on several films, and he wrote the early book-length essay on her work – Walking Shadows: An Essay on Lotte Reiniger's Silhouette Films, (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1931).
With the rise of the Nazi Party, Reiniger and Koch decided to emigrate (both were involved in left-wing politics),
but found that no other country would give them permanent visas. As a
result, the couple spent the years 1933–1944 moving from country to
country, staying as long as travel visas would allow. They cooperated
with Jean Renoir in Paris and Luchino Visconti in Rome. Somehow, they still managed to make 12 films during this period, the best-known being Carmen (1933) and Papageno (1935), both based on popular operas (Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte). When World War II commenced they stayed with Visconti in Rome until 1944, then moved back to Berlin.
In 1949, Reiniger and Koch moved to London, where she made a few short advertising films for the Ground Film Unit and John Grierson's General Post Office Film Unit. While she was living in London in the early 1950s she became friends with "Freddie" Bloom, who was the first director of the National Deaf Children's Society,
and asked her to design a logo for the new charity. Reiniger responded
by cutting out 4 children running up a hill. Bloom was amazed at her
skill with the scissors – in a few moments she created about four
different silhouettes of the children from black paper. The logo was
used until the 1990s, when a design company was invited to revamp the
design. The result was a very minor modification but the new design was
also dropped a few years later.
With Louis Hagen Jr. (the son of Reiniger's financier of Prince Achmed
in Potsdam) they founded Primrose Productions in 1953 and, over the
next two years, produced more than a dozen short silhouette films based
on Grimms' Fairy Tales for BBC and Telecasting America. Reiniger also provided illustrations for the 1953 book King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green.
Reiniger was awarded the Filmband in Gold of the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1972; in 1979 she received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Reiniger died in Dettenhausen, Germany, on June 19, 1981, at the age of 82.
"Born to Be Wild", a biographical excerpt from Women and Animation, a Compendium (edited by Jayne Pilling) focusing on Reiniger's childhood; part of the British Film Institute's "Drawn to be Wild" website[dead link]
Title card from the 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost. The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation
technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made
from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique
she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting.
Several famous avant-garde animators worked on this film with Lotte Reiniger. These included Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, and Carl Koch.
The story is based on elements taken from the collection 1001 Arabian Nights, specifically The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou featured in Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book.
With the assistance of Aladdin, the Witch of the Fiery Mountain, and a
magic horse, the title character reclaims the magic lamp and conquers
the African sorcerer. The culminating scene in the film is the battle
between "die Hexe" (the witch) and "der afrikanische Zauberer" (the
African sorcerer), in which those characters undergo fabulous
transformations. All is well in the end: Aladdin marries Dinarsade
(Achmed's sister and daughter of the Caliph); Achmed marries Pari Banu;
the African sorcerer is defeated; and the foursome return to the
Caliph's kingdom.
No original German nitrate
prints of the film are known to still exist. While the original film
featured color tinting, prints available just prior to the restoration
had all been in black and white. Working from surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists restored the film during 1998 and 1999 including reinstating the original tinted image by using the Desmet method.
