{"id":46952,"date":"2016-05-08T17:08:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T21:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.pro\/?p=46952"},"modified":"2016-05-06T14:11:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T18:11:14","slug":"uncommon-knowledge-silhouette-get-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/2016\/uncommon-knowledge-silhouette-get-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Knowledge: Where Did the Silhouette Get its Name?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/product\/custom-silhouette-tote?source=blog_freshpickeduk\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-47071\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/UK_160508.jpg\" alt=\"Custom Silhouette Tote | UncommonGoods\" width=\"650\" height=\"650\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Long before selfies, the silhouette was a popular, cheap alternative to formal portraiture like oil paintings or marble busts. From the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, they were a common way to quickly capture a likeness, preserved today only as souvenirs from spots like Colonial Williamsburg. But did you ever wonder why they\u2019re called <em>silhouettes<\/em> instead of \u201cquaint black paper cut-outs often seen over Grandma\u2019s mantle?\u201d Other than that being a mouthful, silhouettes are named for \u00c9tienne de Silhouette, a mid-eighteenth century French economist. If this doesn\u2019t make perfect sense, let me profile it for you. A sharp critic of the French aristocracy\u2019s spendthrift ways, Silhouette\u2019s conservative economic approach became synonymous with \u201ccheap\u201d in his day, making silhouette shorthand for chintzy things, including cut paper portraits. While this is the most plausible theory of the association, it might also be based on the brevity of Silhouette\u2019s tenure (less than a year), reflecting the short sitting required for a silhouette. It\u2019s also suspected that Silhouette himself was a weekend silhouette maker, so his hobby was named for him. In any case, that\u2019s the outline of this quirky history.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/product\/custom-silhouette-tote?source=blog_freshpickeduk\">Custom Silhouette Tote<\/a> | $100<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long before selfies, the silhouette was a popular, cheap alternative to formal portraiture like oil paintings or marble busts.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":47071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[813],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46952"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47073,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46952\/revisions\/47073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}