Vernon's silhouettes

[Tom Gilbert]

If Vernon could have made that money cutting them, right now about $900 for two of them.

[Brad Jeffers]

I turned over more than a thousand of Dai's silhouettes to David Ben.

[Bill Mullins]

This is being offered as a Dai Vernon silhouette, for $200.

I'm no expert, but I doubt it.

[David Ben]

I’m not sure that I’m the expert either, but I’ve looked at hundreds of Vernon’s silhouettes from different decades, and I agree with Bill.

[Bill Mullins]

I was hoping you'd weigh in, David. Glad to hear you concur.

[AJM]

The seller had another Verner silhouette on his page - what is the view on that one?

[Richard Kaufman]

The second one is signed, and the signature sure as hell looks like Vernon's to me. But it's $500, which is overpriced, I think.

[David Ben]

I believe the second one is genuine.

[Brad Jeffers]

The second one is signed, and the signature sure as hell looks like Vernon's to me.

The signature is spelled VERNEN.
Dai's name was Verner until moving to New York when he changed it to Vernon.
I don't think he ever used the spelling V-E-R-N-E-N.

[Bill Mullins]

I don't think he ever used the spelling V-E-R-N-E-N.

If you have a newspapers.com account, you can find a number of articles from 1925 to 1929 or so where "D. W. Vernen", the New York Silhouette Expert, has come to town and will cut your silhouette.

[David Ben]

For those interested in this topic, you will find Larry Horowitz and Steve Schlanger’s article, “The Evolution of Dai Vernon’s Autograph”, in Magicol, No. 187, the May 2014 issue, of interest.

[Bill Mullins]

Here's two "Vernen" silhouettes:

[Bill Mullins]

Someone got a deal:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126015796524

For the distant future, when the link dies, it was a 1927 Vernon silhouette that sold out of Tallahassee for $35. It was labeled on the back "Zemma Elizabeth Stewart". There's a marriage notice in the Atlanta Constitution for Jan 20 1929 for Zemma Elizabeth Stewart getting hitched to Vernon Armisted Maxwell, so I'd imagine that Vernon cut this in one of his tours through Atlanta. Later on, there's a picture of her in another notice, but it's not a profile so you can't compare the likenesses.
Zemma died in 1994. Zemma and Vernon's only child, Jean Maxwell Mitchell, died in 2012.
It's not often you can pin down who the sitter was on an old silhouette.

If the person who bought this (congratulations!) wants to contact me, I can send the picture and articles to them. Email me at amcombill at hotmail dot com.

[Bill Mullins]

Well, I've missed the edit window, but Vernon was cutting for the All Saints Episcopal Church women's auxiliary in Oct 1927 in Atlanta.

[Bill Mullins]

Someone got the deal of the century.

[Richard Kaufman]

Eek!

[John M. Dale]

I’m not very familiar with silhouette practices. Was it common to do mirror image silhouettes like these?

JMD

[Bill Mullins]

I’m not very familiar with silhouette practices. Was it common to do mirror image silhouettes like these?

JMD

Yes. A cutter would sell one silhouette for a base price, and a duplicate (a second layer of paper), for only a little more. So both grandmothers could get a picture of their grandson, for example.

And some cutters would do a duplicate for their own files, so if the sitter wanted another one at a later date, they could write to the cutter and the cutter would copy their duplicate and send it to the sitter.

If a cutter was doing a celebrity, they would do a duplicate, get the sitter to sign it, and use the duplicate as part of their advertising or for their own collection. I have a silhouette that came from the estate of Nancy Van Court, a prominent cutter in the 1930s. It is signed by Billie Burke, who played Glinda the Good Witch in the film The Wizard of Oz. Presumably when Burke sat for van Court, the artist cut two, sold one to Billie Burke and kept the other one.

[Edward Pungot]

This is the one I always remember. I think Vernon talks about this encounter in the Revelation Tapes. Seeing the others on here, there is definitely a unique look to Vernon’s silhouettes. I wonder how many copies of this particular cutting there are? Seems like something that could potentially easily be forged. Paper dating?

[John M. Dale]

Thanks for filling me in, Bill.

JMD

[Richard Kaufman]

Vernon always used a black piece of paper folded in half so that he was simultaneously cutting two. I saw him do this.

[pixsmith]

Vernon always used a black piece of paper folded in half so that he was simultaneously cutting two. I saw him do this.

Bob White did the same. It was really interesting hearing him talk about silhouette cutting. Like magic, he broke it all down and took it very seriously.

[David Nethery]

Someone got a deal:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126015796524

For the distant future, when the link dies, it was a 1927 Vernon silhouette that sold out of Tallahassee for $35. It was labeled on the back "Zemma Elizabeth Stewart". There's a marriage notice in the Atlanta Constitution for Jan 20 1929 for Zemma Elizabeth Stewart getting hitched to Vernon Armisted Maxwell, so I'd imagine that Vernon cut this in one of his tours through Atlanta. Later on, there's a picture of her in another notice, but it's not a profile so you can't compare the likenesses.
Zemma died in 1994. Zemma and Vernon's only child, Jean Maxwell Mitchell, died in 2012.
It's not often you can pin down who the sitter was on an old silhouette.

If the person who bought this (congratulations!) wants to contact me, I can send the picture and articles to them. Email me at amcombill at hotmail dot com.

For when the eBay link dies , here are a few screen captures of what was sold.