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Maine Antique Digest August 2017
  • Great excitement surrounds the discovery of a personal folio by the master silhouettist, Augustin Edouart. Edouart’s folios with more than 100,000 duplicate silhouettes sank in a shipwreck in 1849. Some of the duplicate folios were raised from the bottom of the bay and Edouart left these with the family who cared for him after the shipwreck. The family sold them in the 20th century and the duplicate silhouettes as well as a few other recovered folios (perhaps kept by the salvagers) have been available for collectors and museums. The newly uncovered book is different and the silhouettes it contains do not appear to be duplicates. This is a personal book that Edouart named >Animaux and described on the paper edges as Scraps. It seems that Edouart took this recovered book back to France after the shipwreck, where it remained until very recently when it turned up from a Parisian bookseller. Edouart used Animaux to store those uncommon types of figures that he needed to practice for commissions as well as miniature figures, mythical figures, animals and such that he cut for his own amusement. In America, these silhouettes are being offered for sale exclusively by Peggy McClard Americana & Folk Art