(b Saanen, Berne, 1809; d Château d’Oex, Vaud, 29 March 1871). Swiss découpage and silhouette artist. He is one of the few masters of Swiss popular folk art whose corpus of works have survived, although very little is actually known of his life. He was apparently a labourer who travelled widely in central Switzerland seeking itinerant employment and who, in his spare time, supplied rural communities with paper silhouettes and cut-outs that were used to decorate their homes. He sold his work door-to-door and used imagery that was easily comprehensible to his prospective buyers. Many of his works are extraordinarily complex in form and technique, often employing multiple layers of paper and various colour schemes. His subjects were frequently drawn from country life, depicting farm animals and traditional rituals, as seen in Alpine Procession (1867; Château d’Oex, Mus. Vieux-Pays d’Enhaut), which represents a large herd of cows going to summer mountain pastures. Some of his most intricate works are purely decorative patterns and blend more than a dozen colours in an equal number of layers of paper (e.g. Flowers, c. 1850; Château d’Oex, Mus. Vieux-Pays d’Enhaut). Few of his works are signed or dated. There are a number, however, that bear dates from the 1850s, indicating a particularly creative period in his life. His images are striking because they combine exquisite craftmanship with a fertile imagination.