Research regarding the processes by which the shadow portraiture was produced, results in a baffling amount of material. Besides the professional silhouettists, who worked on definite lines of their own, or who used several of the processes from time to time according to the wishes of the sitter and the purpose for which the portrait was intended, there was a very large number of amateur workers who used any materials that came to hand and any process or mixture of processes which seemed good to them for gaining the desired result. The silhouette portrait produced by the brush on ivory, card, or plaster is not necessarily the highest type, although it approaches most nearly to the work of the miniature painter, for the technique of one or two of the cutters, such as Edouart, is so fine that it lifts this humbler process on to the highest plane. Many miniature painters of the eighteenth century worked alternately in black profile portraiture and colour. Silhouettes thus done are, in fact, original profile portraits in monochrome; the process employed for producing them has nothing to do with scissor or penknife cutting. Those who know only the picture of more or less shiny black paper stuck on card by inferior cutters of the early and mid Victorian era, are apt to consider the silhouette beneath contempt from the artistic point of view; but the collector who has studied fine examples, and who knows many processes, understands that each variety has its special charm, and that many have an individuality and dignity which raise them to a very high level. John Miers, whose silhouette of Robert Burns is in the National Portrait Gallery of Edinburgh, worked at Leeds, and afterwards had headquarters in the Strand, opposite Exeter Change, where he was in partnership for many years with John Field, another silhouettist, whose work is of very fine quality. On most of Miers’ work he is described as “late of Leeds.” His early business label in Leeds is extremely rare. It is on a fine portrait of a man which lies before us. This is painted on plaster, and, like nearly all his early work, is untouched with gold. Miers did an enormous amount of work on plaster and ivory, in the usual 2½ to 3 inch oval size, as well as the inch to half-inch size for mounting in rings, brooches, and pins. These latter are frequently signed “Miers,” sometimes “Miers and Field.” On a fine portrait by Field, during the time of the partnership with Miers, there is an advertisement on the back; the partners set forth the announcement at this period that they