c.1780 German Silhouette Ring

A c. 1780 German silhouette ring, the large oval head with a painted profile of a lady surrounded by floral garlands, set beneath a glass compartment within a halo of gold beading, the shank chased with floral scrolls. Two highly similar rings, also dated c. 1780, are in the Koch collection (see cat. 1031 & 1032, Rings, The Alice and Louis Koch Collection by Anna Beatriz Chadour). While silhouette jewelry was made throughout Europe during the late 18th c., Germanic character is reflected in the floral garland ornament, constructed from colored foils and beads. Broadly speaking, silhouette rings made elsewhere in Europe tended to feature monochrome grounds, while German examples follow a broader regional preference for polychrome design featuring mixed-media techniques. Both Koch collection rings feature similar garlands. The present ring also shares a similar ring profile as Koch no. 1031, and shank design as Koch no. 1032. The overall form of these rings reflect a transition from rococo to neoclassical design: while the large ring head size and silhouette motif are novel traits ushered by the neoclassical era, the chased floral shank paired with a circular head is nonetheless a rococo inheritance. By c. 1800, rococo influence would be largely removed from neoclassical rings. The trim of large gold beads is another trait from the 1780s, likely inspired by granulation from antiquity, and more famously seen in Portuguese jewelry from the same era. For examples of neoclassical rings with gold bead halos, see British museum AF.1726, AF.1479, & AF.1480. The present ring’s rose gold tests as 12k, which is consistent with lower karat purity of large continental rings made during the last two decades of the 18th c, as a result of economic turmoil and war.

Silhouettes were more commonly called ‘shades’ or ‘profiles’ during the 18th century. These shadow-like images became widely popular in late 18th c Europe alongside neoclassicism, and were possibly inspired or influenced by Greek black-figure pottery, as well as accounts of the ancients tracing profiles of faces, as thrown upon a wall by the light of a lamp (see Pliney the Elder, Natural History, Chapter 5 Book XXXV). In 1775, the physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater further popularized silhouettes by publishing his hugely popular Essays on Physiognomy, which was illustrated with numerous black profiles, making the argument that “Shades are the truest representation that can be given of man”. Most 18th c shade specialists were itinerant artists who worked out of booths at crowded fairs, markets, or tourist sites, relying on speed and a large client base to compete with portrait miniaturists. The silhouettist John Miers for instance advertised that he could produce the “Most striking Likenesses taken in One Minute”. Shades were created by placing a sitter between a bright light and a sheet of paper, the outline of the shadow being then traced onto paper. Skilled specialists were able to “reduce to any size” the resulting image for rings and various jewelry by working up a miniaturized copy. This is why larger silhouettes were sometimes cut from blackened paper, but shades in rings were almost always hand-painted. The fast and affordable nature of the silhouette facilitated its dissemination as a fashionable token of sentiment between friends or family; despite its start as a kind of ‘portraiture for cheap’, silhouettes took on poetic significance in sentimental and mourning jewelry to represent the lingering shadow—and therefore memory or presence—of a loved one, living or dead. Many well-made gold silhouette rings from the 18th c. have survived (see Koch Collection 1037, 1033, 1036, 1008).
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