A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I had the opportunity to travel in Switzerland, a place I’d only visited previously on fleeting one-day event bookings. I decided to record the trip with a silhouette diary.
The idea was to cut a few silhouettes each day of places we stayed and sights which intrigued me. As the journey progressed I began posting some of these silhouettes to Facebook. This is quite unlike me as I’m not usually known for social-media engagement, I’ve never quite managed to figure out the rules! Yet in the this instance the responses I received there were both positive and helpful.
A Railway Journey in Switzerland
Our journey began in Basel and proceeded by train to Zurich and Chur. From there we took the Glacier Express to Zermatt, neat the Matterhorn. After that we travelled gently back to Basel, stopping in Interlaken and Bern. Many of the silhouettes I cut were of buildings and trains, with a few mountains towards the end. It was the first time I ever tried to cut a silhouette of a mountain!
Leporellos & Silhouettes
I pasted all the silhouettes into a leporello sketchbook, which gradually became longer and longer as we went along. I’ve always liked this concertina-style of sketchbook as they allow a narrative to develop. This narrative can then be seen “at a glance” when the book is opened out in its entirety. One of the great frustrations of more traditional sketchbooks is that they can only be exhibited one page at a time. Not so a leporello, as my Facebook posts demonstrated. A couple of people even asked if I would ever consider selling the finished book. This caught me by surprise. I’ve always considered sketchbooks to be the private domain of the artist, not really of interest to others.
This request sparked an idea at the back of my mind…
The silhouettes in the book are not, strictly speaking, paper cuttings in the same sense as my events-based work. They are made by combining scissor-cut black paper with ink and pencil drawings, so should be more accurately described as mixed media work. I’ve employed this technique before (most often when asked to make silhouettes of buildings) but had not used it for this kind of travel sketching.
Cutting and Drawing
The relationship between drawing and cutting has always fascinated me. Much of my studio-based artistic research is about exploring the similarities and differences between drawn and cut lines. Anybody who ever visited my studio will have heard me speak about this. Line and the process of drawing could easily be described as life-long obsessions for me. The silhouettes sketches I made in Switzerland form part of this ongoing process of exploration.
Partly, the reason for employing mixed media this way is because there are limits to the level of detail which can be cut with scissors, particularly when trying to work quickly on the move. However, I also found myself looking for interesting juxtapositions between the cut and drawn elements in each sketch. I stuck each silhouette into the book along one edge only. This allows it to be lifted away from the leporello backing paper, making it easy to see which parts are drawn and which are cut.
New Directions
Once I returned to the UK I worked to finish the book, cutting a few more silhouettes from photos which I hadn’t found time to make while travelling and posting them to Facebook. Then (as so often happens) the finished book found its way onto my bookshelves, along with many others, and may never have been seen again.
Yet, somehow this book felt different, as if I’d found a new direction. The ideas sparked by those who asked if I would ever consider selling it lingered. So, earlier this year I took the book down from my shelves and exhibited it my annual open-studio event in Reading, where it was well received. I now know what to do with it.
An Artist’s Book
My plan is to reproduce it as a limited-edition, hand-assembled artist’s book. To this end I scanned all the silhouettes and showing them to a colleague from the Reading Business Club who recently purchased a small laser-cutting machine. He wanted to see what the machine could do! After some experimentation he produced a superbly accurate reproduction of one of the paper cuttings. So I’ve now commissioned him to cut the complete set and am talking to my printers about printing the leporello, complete with the drawn elements of each silhouette. I will then need to assemble each book by hand, sticking the laser-cuttings accurately on top of the drawings.
Working with a laser cutter I quickly realised that it can cut small details like window bars which I had found impractical to cut with scissors during the trip. This means that my mixed-media approach was no longer strictly necessary. However, after pondering this for a while, I decided to reproduce the book as I had cut the originals with scissors, including any rough edges and zig-zag snips. I want people to have the same experience, of being able to separate and examine the cut and drawn elements, as they can with the original book.
Limited Edition of 50
I am going to produce a limited edition of just 50 books. Each will be signed and numbered by the artist. The cost is still be confirmed, but will depend on the cost of printing and laser cutting as well as the time to assemble each book by hand. This is still to be determined by experimentation!
I’ll post an update when the book is available. In the meantime do let me have your thoughts below!
Update / 6th November 2025 / By Charles Burns
The book was launched today and is now available in my shop
Dear Charles, this is absolutely beautiful; once I’ve read your email I had to rush here to comment. It’s very inspirational; and very relevant to me – while cutting silhouettes of people turned out to be too challenging to me, I really love paper cutting art. I do it a lot on public transportation and flights (contrary to common believe, you can totally bring on small scissors on board airplanes, to your viewers who don’t know), and I love making art and giving it away to kids or flight attendants – but it didn’t occur to me to cut what’s in front of my eyes as a memory (I usually opted for sketching in such cases – but now I recognize my error 🙂 ).
THANK YOU!
Alon.
Thank you Alon, I’m very happy to have given you some inspiration. I look forward to seeing some scissor-cut sketches soon!
Fabulous work, Charles. I am sure anyone who lives in these places would recognise them immediately. As for the ‘no apparent source’ then it’s clear to those who have a keen eye…
The silhouettes we have of the weddings you covered are much cherished in the family especially as two are now sadly departed. How can I get a copy of the silhouette of my dad?
(PS I just take photos as I’m useless with scissors and as for drawing…! Shocking.)
Hi Susan. The odd thing about the no-apparent-source shadow was that it became immediately clear when I looked at the photo afterwards, but while I was sitting in the church with a sketchbook it completely confused me and quite freaked me out!
Yes, I can make a copy of your Dad’s silhouette. Do you know the date it was cut? If so, it should be easy to find in the archives.
Ah, I am born in Freiburg, so Basel is a familiar place. Seeing your silhouettes authentically representing Basel pulls my heart strings. Thank you for that 🙂
Thank you Rebecca. It’s a wonderful city, I’m so glad to have discovered it!
That leporello is delightful and I’m glad you found a way to produce a limited run!
Thank you Vivien, it’s an interesting adventure. I’m looking forward to seeing it happen.
I did love your Basel silhouette book when we visited, was an absolute delight and very unique. A fun way of journeying through a town artistically. Id never heard of a laporello before, what a sensibly creative idea, makes perfect sense when drawing a sequence of pics as i often have. Limited editions of the book sounds brill, lovely way to share your talent. And thanks for the interestimg story i enjoyed reading. Grace xxx