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Francis Giles used to live in Newport, Wales, before he sadly passed away in the late 1990's. I visited him once and some swapped cuttings, and some stories about silhouettes. He was then retired and (I fear) this is not one of his best. I do have some others by him in my collection. When I started cutting silhouettes myself in the 1980's Francis Giles was (to my knowledge) the only practicing silhouette artist in the UK at that time.
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| Me, by Francis Giles | Francis Giles, by me |
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Mike and I have worked together for many years and he is without doubt the best silhouettist I know working in the UK today. Over the years we have swapped many cuttings, but here are a couple of my favourites!
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A full length silhouette of me by Mike, together with a miniature portrait I drew for Mike in 2008.
Megumi, like myself, spends her time wandering from party to party, travelling the country "on scissors". She works together with her husband Steve who folds little origami wonders. Together they go under the name of "Paper Magic".
Her profile of me is one of the best of my swaps, small and intricate, the way a silhouette should be.
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Megumi's cutting of me, together with a silhouette I made for her in 1997
This is my earliest swap, dating from 1994. Steve Abbott is best known as a collector of silhouettes, and for his work lecturing on the history of silhouettes, but he is also a keen amateur silhouettist, and has worked with us as a "Roving Artist" from time to time. I met him when he surreptitiously cut this one of me on my old stamping ground at Covent Garden! I did one for him as well, and this photo is from Steve's sketchbook with the silhouettes stuck in.
These next two are my swap with Kevin Martyn. Kevin considers his silhouette cutting to be just one of his many passions, and specialises in cutting very fast silhouettes with a slightly caricatured style, and with the emphasis very much on entertinment rather than art.
He currently lives in Weston-super-Mare with his wife Tess and young family, and his scissors are enjoying semi-retirement while he concentrates on writing & product development. This is one of my favourite swaps, with its confident curves & bold outline. Very like Kevin actually!
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| Kevin, by me | Me, by Kevin |
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This swap was a great surprise to me. I was working in the National Portrait Gallery in London, at the opening of an exhibition about the history of silhouettes, when this lady approached me and introduced herself as a fellow silhouette artist. We talked for a while, and it seems she worked for many years on the pier at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, but has now retired.
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Mrs Rowlinson-Lauder's cutting of me on the left, and my picture of her on the right