Unusual Collage of Cutwork Paper Military Silhouettes: A Lantern Slide Show, American circa 1850

comprising 110 military figures, including infantry marching in formation with bayonets; mounted cavalry; soldiers firing cannons various individual horsemen and eight buildings, trees and shrubs, the horses with silk thread tails; all on a black ground.

The lantern slide silhouette show was most probably used to illustrate a talk on the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

Robert Clinger, military historian and curator for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., believed that the piece was used as a "Lantern Slide Silhouette Show" (a particular type of early slide show), for someone to give a talk on a battle in the Mexican War (U.S. vs. Mexico) of 1846-1848.

An oil lamp with bulls eye lenses was positioned behind the silhouettes (like a slide show), which were then passed through/moved in the light.  The sticks, seen attached to some of the individual soldier silhouettes, were used to push the silhouettes up into the light and provide movement.  The thin wires attached to certain individual cavalry and infantry figures, and 2 of the rows of infantry figures, also provided movement and the illusion of action when pulled.

Its use as a sophisticated means of presenting an illustrated talk explains why this paper piece survived, for if it had been a toy, as some believed it was, it almost certainly would not have been preserved.