AT OUR LAST MEETING ON FRIDAY 19 JANUARY 2024, WE WENT AROUND THE TABLE showing and telling about recent finds, ephemera about work and travel, and with questions about items.
Newish member Marilyn R produced a card with a black silhouette profile of woman and asked us to guess its age. There was no information on the back (or front of the card). The haircut was a bob. Marilyn pointed out it was like her own profile, so possibly a relative.
There is always an ESA member who can throw light even in difficult circumstances. This time it was Lyndel W. She remembers asking her parents to have a silhouette like this made of her at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney when she was four or four or six years old. Lynden and Marilyn are of a similar age. Below an example borrowed from the www.
It turns out that this silhouette was made of Marilyn at the Royal Melbourne Show at about the same time. Marilyn’s brother remembered them being made of each of them – his is lost.
Following up, as ESA members tend to do
David H forwarded this information from Wikipedia:
Sebastian John Ross (April 24, 1919 – August 24, 2008) was an American-born Australian caricature artist and showman, famous for his miniature silhouette portraits cut in black card and mounted on a white background. He made numerous media appearances and became a well-known identity at annual shows such as the Sydney Royal Easter Show and the Brisbane Ekka, where he worked each year for about 60 years. He was regarded within his lifetime as “a legend”.
He first visited Australia in 1942 as a U.S. Serviceman, and in 1945 married an Australian WAAF, Phyllis Counsell. After returning to America in the late 1940s, in 1950 he moved permanently to Australia and lived in NSW at Springwood. In 1950 with some assistance from Jimmy Sharman Snr. he was introduced to the life of the Australian outdoor showmen and worked the shows up until 2008. In that time he worked capital shows in Sydney, Melbourne Adelaide and Brisbane. John also toured regional Queensland & NSW shows. John Ross worked at Luna Park Sydney from 1950 until 1979. From then until his death in 2008 aged 89, when not on tour, he worked at the observation deck at Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower. During this time he created thousands of portraits, including that of many celebrities. He appeared on television and radio on many occasions and hundreds of articles were written about him in newspapers and magazines.
John was held in high regard by all in the Australian Show Society, being given many Show legend awards. When receiving one of these awards John always said jokingly that he would “rather be a live legend than a dead one”.
He was known as S. John Ross and also as “The Silhouette Man”, “The Master of the Silhouette”, “The Silhouette Man of Luna Park” and “Scissors John“.
And I, Mandy Bede couldn’t resist some research in Trove newspapers. He went to all the big and small shows it seems as well as working for Woolworths.
Cutting, but be finds it pays: CPL. S. John Ross, 24, US Army, cuts his way through life. That’s how he made his living back home in the States — snipping silhouettes at fashionable Long Beach, California. A half -pint of bounding energy, he can cut startling like nesses in little more than 30 seconds. He proved it yesterday when he bounced into “The Sunday Sun” office and proceeded to cut silhouettes of a bewildered staff. Ross started cutting out when he was 14, and seven years ago decided to go in for it professionally. He has cut more than 100,000 silhouettes, including those of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and film stars Spencer Tracey, Mickey Rooney, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Stan Laurel, to mention a few. He uses special surgical scissors for the work. “I’d like to stay here after the war,” he said, “and maybe cut silhouettes at your big annual Show. Australians appreciate them just as much as the folks did back home.” Sun (Sydney), Sunday 15 August 1943, page 5
Silhouette Artist Attracts City Crowd: Cutting amazingly life-like silhouettes from black paper with scissors in 45 seconds, former American Army Staff-Sergeant S. John Ross is drawing crowds on the Pitt-street pavement out side Woolworths. He has had to be moved down stairs except for brief appearances in the window. “Although I was in one of the first American contingents to reach Australia, in 1942, General MacArthur had me doing nothing but cut silhouettes all my army career in the Pacific,” said Mr. Ross. His silhouettes appeared in “Guinea Gold,” other Digger publications and American Army Journals. While on leave from the Philippines, Mr. Ross married a Hazelbrook (Blue Mountains) girl. Discharged back in California in November, 1945, he made straight for Australia to rejoin his wife. He likes it out here, and he and his wife are looking for a house…. Mr Ross Is being sent to all capital cities and other branch stores by Woolworths. Sun (Sydney), Saturday 4 May 1946, page 3
ARMED with a pair of scissors and a piece of black paper, American serviceman John Ross pushed through a Washington crowd to within a few feet of visiting Winston Churchill and cut out a paper silhouette of Churchill in 45 seconds. That was in the war years when John did not worry about what he would do for a living when the war ended. But his scissors talent drew such attention that a leading American newspaper chain signed him up to tour the United States, cutting on-the-spot silhouettes of prominent people for newspaper publication.
He has now made “silhouette portraiture,” as he calls it, his profession. “I believe that men and women express their character in the profile of their face even more than in the full-face expression,” he says. “I think a silhouette can express personality more than a photograph or a drawing. It is an art which will achieve more recognition as time goes on.”
John was in Melbourne with United States forces in 1942, married an Australian girl, took her “back home” with him, but now the couple have re-turned to Melbourne to live. John is spending Show Week sketching at the Royal Diamond Jubilee Show. Argus (Melbourne), Friday 22 September 1950, page 6
 S. John Ross at work at the Sydney Royal Easter Show | |
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