Here is the new Jane Austen Silhouette and the place to have your own silhouettes cut by Charles over Zoom.
To book a sitting please click on a date then choose a time from the drop down list. We will be donating 10% of all sittings to the Jane Austen Literary Foundation.
Please checkout using the coupon code: pro-file-jane
This will give you a 10% discount and donate a further 10% to the Foundation
Each sitting is long enough for two people to have a silhouette cut. For family groups please book two or more consecutive sittings. All sittings take place over Zoom, so it really doesn’t matter where in the world you are. The cost of each sitting includes worldwide delivery of your silhouettes by airmail.
If none of the four upcoming dates suit you, please look at the full list.
You can see Charles talking about his Jane Austen silhouette and the launch of the new bookplate for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation in this video.
Creation of a New Bookplate
![Bookplate reads "From the Collection of [Your Name Here]" with the silhouette of Jane Austen beneath in an oval cutaway mount](https://www.silhouettist.com//wp-content/uploads/2021/07/jane-austen-bookplate-450x450.jpg)
When approached by the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation to make a silhouette for their bookplate collection my immediate thought was to make a hew silhouette of the famous author herself.
This turned out to be a popular idea!
I used as my model the recent waxwork which stands in the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and donated my work for an exclusive use to the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.
They’ve created a bookplate based on the new silhouette.
Visit JALitF bookplate shop to buy your own copy personalised with your name in Jane’s handwriting. All proceeds go to the Foundation’s charitable projects.
What did Jane Austen Look Like?
There’s a lot of speculation what Jane Austen really looked like, but it’s sadly impossible to be sure.
The only clues come from one or two silhouettes and a couple of sketches, but little else.
The most familiar image of her comes from a silhouette in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The silhouette is captioned, in French “The amiable Jane” so the gallery lists it as possibly being Jane Austen. It depicts a pretty young woman with her hair in a bun and some details of dress added in pencil over the silhouette (these are always omitted in reproductions).
But there’s no way to be sure this is really her.
A more reliable silhouette is the one she herself made in Winchester a year or two before she died. Making silhouettes was a popular pastime in the Regency period, so it should not come as a surprise that she did this.
She would have made it – with the help of a friend – by tracing her own shadow onto a piece of paper. This creates a life-size tracing from which a smaller silhouette could later be made.
The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation
Founded in 2014 by Caroline Jane Knight, Jane Austen’s fifth great niece, the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation is a registered not for profit organisation run by volunteers. Caroline is the last of the Austen descendants to grow up in Chawton, in Hampshire, where Jane herself lived, wrote and published her most famous works. Since 2014, Caroline has gathered a team of passionate volunteers across four continents who assist in the fundraising efforts and the running of the foundation. The Foundation connects a world-wide grass roots community of people who believe in the power of literacy and want to help those who need it, particularly at this time of international education crisis. All volunteers dedicate their time to the Foundation for free, so that all proceeds from donations go directly to JALitF literacy projects.
The Bookplate Programme has been running for almost as long as the Foundation itself, and has created a unique collection of diverse and beautiful bookplates that feature the work of talented artists from around the world. Each collectable bookplate can be purchased individually at the Bookplate Shop. The bookplates come personalised with your name in Jane Austen’s handwriting and with a collectable two-page letter with the information about the Foundation and the Artists who created the artwork for the bookplate and donated it to us.
All silhouette sittings booked from this page result in a donation to JALitF. So please don’t delay!
Remember to check out using the code: pro-file-jane