One of my favorite sources for interesting stories to use in presentations and content is DailyArt. It’s an app that shares a work of art and the story behind it every day, and a recent entry stopped me in my tracks, because it was a beautiful and unusual illustration of how constraints drive creativity and craft, or of how simplicity stands out. (And you know how much I love an unusual or atypical illustration….)
On that particular day, the “daily art” was a silhouette. Nothing fancy, just the profile of a woman, made out of precisely cut black paper. The artist? Moses Williams—a name most people don’t recognize, but absolutely should. His subject? Angelica Peale Robinson, the daughter of painter Charles Willson Peale. That’s some of the craftsmanship.
Here’s where the constraints come in: Williams was born to enslaved parents in the late 1700s. His parents became “property” of painter Charles Willson Peale as payment for two portraits. (Side note: Peale had quite the flair for drama, naming his children Rembrandt, Raphael, and Titian. Not kidding.)
When Pennsylvania gradually abolished slavery in the late 1780s, Moses’s parents gained freedom. Yet through a legal loophole, Moses remained indentured to Peale into adulthood.
While Peale’s biological children received training in “prestigious” arts like oil painting, Moses was excluded from these opportunities. As an indentured servant, those doors remained closed to him.
Instead, he learned silhouette making—the craft of cutting profiles from black paper, popular before photography existed.
But he didn’t simply learn this skill. He perfected it.
What struck me about Moses’s silhouette is that it wasn’t one of Charles Wilson Peale’s elaborate paintings. Just a simple, but captivating, paper cutout is what endured.
Stories like these are exactly why I maintain my “swipe file”—a collection of unusual, unexpected stories, useful academic or scientific studies, and sometimes some completely random stuff. When crafting content that moves people, the most powerful examples rarely come from obvious places.
I’m curious:
Where do you discover unusual, compelling, overlooked stories?
I’m constantly expanding my swipe file. Got a favorite app, website, or source? Comment and let me know.