A few months ago, Mary Ann Fiebert, a Leiper House docent, spotted a silhouette in an auction listing for Brigg’s Auction House. It looked very much like the one that hangs in the primary bedroom at the Leiper House.

The Friends of Leiper House had the good fortune to place the winning bid on the small framed silhouette—just 3 by 5 inches—marked “Elizabeth C. Leiper” on the back in iron gall ink. Elizabeth Coultas Gray Leiper was the wife of Thomas Leiper. The 1785 Leiper House was their country home.

At first glance, the silhouette seemed like a simple black-and-white portrait of Elizabeth Leiper, created in the days before photography. But a closer look has revealed that this little image has a story to tell.

Silhouettes became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries as an affordable way to preserve a person’s likeness. A sitter’s profile was traced using a mechanical device called a physiognotrace. The profile was then cut from a sheet of paper, creating what is known as a hollowcut—essentially, a paper frame in the shape of the sitter’s profile.

We know from 20th-century scholarship that visitors to Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, founded in 1784 at Third and Lombard Streets, could have their silhouettes cut as souvenirs by artist Moses Williams. As many as 80% of visitors took advantage of the offer.

Moses Williams (c. 1777–c. 1830) was a pioneering, formerly enslaved African American artist and entrepreneur who became one of the first documented Black artists in the United States to achieve professional and financial success through his mastery of silhouette cutting. He is now recognized as one of the most prolific and skilled silhouette makers of early America.

Elizabeth and Thomas Leiper almost certainly visited Peale’s Museum. But was Elizabeth’s silhouette made by Moses Williams? We can’t say for certain—at least not yet.

A surprising discovery

Stephenie Bailey, a Leiper House docent and Manager of Continuing Education and Winterthur Institute, brought our new acquisition to Winterthur’s Conservation Clinic for examination. There, she discovered that this is not actually a traditional silhouette cutting.

Conservators determined that there is no physical ledge between the black and white areas that would indicate that a black paper profile had been pasted onto white paper. Instead, the image is a single-surface photographic contact print.

In this process, the original hollowcut would have been placed directly on top of light-sensitive paper. When exposed to light, the paper underneath the open profile would darken, while the area protected by the hollowcut would remain white. Under a microscope, conservators found a distinctive gray border around Elizabeth’s profile—further evidence that the image was created photographically.

And that discovery opens up some fascinating possibilities.

Multiple photographic contact prints could be made from a single hollowcut. Even more intriguingly, by turning the hollowcut over—using either its front or back—an image could be produced with the profile facing either right or left. The technique also made it possible to create enlarged versions of a silhouette on much larger sheets of photosensitive paper.

And that is where our story gets really interesting.

One Elizabeth—or two?

For decades, visitors to Leiper House have admired a large silhouette of Elizabeth Gray Leiper hanging in the primary bedroom.

When conservators compared that silhouette with our new 3-by-5-inch acquisition, they found something remarkable: the two images have the same contour, proportions, and opacity—even down to the fibers visible in the original hollowcut.

Under raking light and microscopic examination, the evidence was conclusive. Our new acquisition and the large silhouette of Elizabeth at the Leiper House are iterations of the same original hollowcut.

Somewhere in the past, someone used Elizabeth’s hand-cut paper profile to create photographic reproductions—preserving her likeness in multiple sizes for generations to come.

Where is the original hollowcut today? We will probably never know.

Was it Moses Williams?

There is another interesting piece to the puzzle.

While investigating the silhouette, Stephenie Bailey met with curatorial experts familiar with the work of Moses Williams. They noted several details in Elizabeth’s profile that are characteristic of Williams’s silhouettes, including the distinctive style of her hair bow and the thin, delicate bang. The direction of the mechanical cuts is also consistent with Williams’s technique.

We cannot positively attribute Elizabeth’s silhouette to Williams. But the similarities make him an intriguing possibility.

For now, the mystery remains.

A little conservation miracle

Our new silhouette has suffered significant water damage. Over time, the deteriorating photographic materials caused the contact print to adhere to the glass. In the conservation world, this is known as blocking.

Fortunately, there is good news. Winterthur’s faculty in photographic conservation is interested in taking on the treatment of the silhouette as a student project, at no cost to the Friends of Leiper House.

Once the image has been stabilized and the blocking addressed, we hope to be able to display this remarkable little portrait at Leiper House.

What began as a small purchase at auction has turned out to be much more than a silhouette of Elizabeth Gray Leiper. It is a window into an early photographic technique, a possible connection to one of America’s pioneering Black artists, and a tangible link between two portraits of Elizabeth that have quietly occupied Leiper House for generations.

And, perhaps, there is still more of the story waiting to be discovered.

The 1785 Leiper House is open for tours every Saturday and Sunday, from 1:00 until 4:00 PM, April through December.