Sarah Harrington’s hollow-cuts

I RECENTLY CAME ACROSS the work of a talented silhouettist called Sarah Harrington.  She was a professional silhouettist who worked during the latter part of the eighteenth century.  What struck me most about about her work (apart from her obvious love of hats) is that they’re all cut inside-out!

Inside-out cutting (or hollow cutting, as it’s more usually called) was a popular technique in early nineteenth-century America. However Sarah Harrington was working 50 years earlier and in England, so this was a surprise to me. The second surprise was the sheer quality of the work. Her single-line cuttings are really intricate, with a level of detail not usually associated with hollow cuts.

So who was Sarah Harrington?

Sarah Harrington is a curiosity. She appears to have been successful as an itinerant sillhouettist, working in towns and cities all over England and possibly also in Ireland, at a time when few women would have been able to promote themselves this way. As well as making silhouettes she is known to have painted on silk, and to have published a number of books. These include a book on “new and elegant amusements” and an introduction to map reading.

Odder still, she managed to do all this while being married, which was not all what was expected of a wife at the time. Her husband, Thomas, is listed as a ‘gentleman’ which probably means he had inherited money and that Sarah had no real need to work. Yet, work she did, and very professionally. The advertisements which precede her visits to various towns show that she had a shrewd financial sense and priced her work to sell.

Could she become a modern feminist icon?

In 1775 she patented her own silhouette machine. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find an illustration of it, as this would be fascinating. Harrington was an early exponent of hollow cutting, so her work can sometimes be hard to distinguish from later artists who copied her style and technique (especially from a Mrs. Collins, with whom she entered into a short partnership.)

Sarah cut silhouettes of many prominent people of the day, including King George II.

Making hollow cut silhouettes

Cutting “inside-out” means that Sarah’s profiles are all cut as holes in sheets of white paper (now rather yellowed.) The piece of paper one would normally consider the ‘off-cut’ is actually the finished artwork, while the piece in the middle – known as “the hole in the doughnut” – is thrown away. The shade, or silhouette, is then created by placing a black material, eg. silk, behind the cutting.

We know that she used a machine of some sort to trace outlines onto the paper before cutting. Some of her cuttings show traces of the pencil marks left by this machine.

There are no entry lines cut into the paper. This shows that once the outline was drawn, Harrington began each silhouette by stabbing the paper with the points of her scissors. She then cut the outline from within in one go. This counter-intuitive technique is quite tricky, but does make sense in an age when black paper would not have been available.

Many of Sarah Harrington’s silhouettes are backed with dark blue, rather than black paper. One advantage of this technique is that you can change the colour of your silhouette very easily.

How easy is it?

Ever curious, I’ve been experimenting with the technique myself. I find that the main problem is to turn the scissors freely, meaning I need to insert the scissors alternately from above and below the paper, depending on which way I’m turning them.

There are advantages. For instance, I find I add eyelashes and stray wisps of hair after cutting the profile. By cutting into the profile I can add such details outside the line, but cannot (or course) cut away any details to make the silhouette smaller. Again, this is the exact reverse of the usual cutting common sense.

Another interesting thing about the technique is that the portrait can be divided into several parts.  This allows me to treat white collars and ties, with a freer and more casual look.

Strangely, the natural direction of the profile is reversed. Right-handed artists usually find it easier to cut the right profile. However, when hollow cutting, the reverse is true: it’s easier for right-handed artists to cut the left profile and for left-handed artists to cut the right.

The Future of Hollow Cutting

In the studio I created a set of hollow-cut life studies, which were at least in part inspired by Sarah Harrington’s work.

I’ve no idea if this technique can ever find a commercial application today. Perhaps I’ll get booked by a modern day manufacturer of black silk? I so, this would be the perfect way to make silhouettes out of silk. As far as I know no artist has used this technique on a regular basis for about 150 years. Perhaps there’s a good reason for this: they’re really hard to make.

However, working at events I find I can present them using my standard backing cards (so I don’t need to carry around a whole new set of kit). This means I can present a hollow cut or two at almost any event; they’ve become a useful addition to my standard repertoire. After cutting a few more usual silhouettes, if I finish with a hollow cut it makes an interesting talking point. People really appreciate their strange inside-out nature!

Do you perhaps have any other ideas about how to revive this ancient profile technique? If so, please let me know below.