It was in 1972, while spending a summer with my wife in Falmouth (on Cape Cod), that I first discovered the 18th-century slate gravestones of New England. Anyone who visits these cemeteries will find it difficult not to be impressed by these monuments–which are among the oldest and most distinguished works of art produced by the craftsmen of the early American colonies. My fascination with them spiraled into many such trips in subsequent years, when I photographed much of this work, learned how to identify the stonecutters responsible for them, and determined the extent and locations of their production.
I wrote...
From Slate to Marble: Gravestone Carving Traditions in Eastern Massachusetts, 1770-1870
This first volume of my two-volume study provides a detailed study of the slate and marble gravestones of over 55 stonecutters in eastern Massachusetts who lived and worked between 1770 and 1870.
This volume examines the lives of these craftsmen, their bodies of work, design repertoires, and lettering styles, the networking that bound them together in their trade, and how stonecutting evolved from a craft to a business enterprise as it shifted from slate to marble monuments. The accompanying data disk contains over 750 color images of gravestones; searchable and sortable lists of over 22,000 gravestones; searchable lists of over 3300 signed and documented gravestones that establish the identity of these carvers; and a catalog of 1300 burial grounds where this work can be found.
Harriette Merrifield Forbes pioneered the field of American gravestone studies. Her admirable study has separate chapters on several artisans, including the 17th and 18th-century stonecutters of Boston, the Lamsons of Charlestown, the Fosters of Dorchester, the stonecutters of Groton and Harvard, and the “Thistle-Carver” of Tatnuck. It also has chapters on the gravestones of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Forbes initiated real interest in this area of research. I found it astounding that she could have accomplished so much in the 1920s—before the introduction of modern battery-powered flash systems (which I relied on so often in highlighting shallow carvings and lettering)—and almost singlehandedly lit the fire of inquiry in so many of us who followed her model. She was also attentive to the human side of this craft, with many interesting observations on the stonecutters’ intentions and skills.
Riverside Press Limited Edition of "Seven hundred and eighty copies of this First Edtion, of which seven hundred and fifty are for sale." Frontispiece is of the 1703 gravestone of John Cleverly, Quincy. This volume deals with the history and symbolism of early gravestones and contains black & white photos throughout. Several stone artists have been researched and included in the text. An historic and fascinating volume.
This book is densely illustrated (I’d guess that about three-quarters of the 430 8”x10” pages of the main text are filled with images). This was what first led me to travel to New England to see these stones for myself, which I did six years later.
This combination of rich art and Puritan values should challenge anyone’s assumptions about early American sensibilities.
In Puritan New England, with its abiding concern for things not of this world and its distrust of forms and ceremonies, one art flourished: the symbolic art of mortuary monument stonecarvers. This carefully researched, beautifully illustrated work was the first to consider this art in depth as a meaningful aesthetic-spiritual expression. It is reissued for today's readers, with a new preface outlining changes in the field since the book appeared in 1966.
The Tashjians’ book challenged the idea that Puritans rejected visual art. Their study is important in documenting a new aesthetic, where the skull (death’s head) gives way to the winged faces of angels (cherubs), which were more gentle and sentimental in style rather than dark and threatening. Specific stonecutters discussed in this book include John Bull, William Codner, Zerrubbabel Collins, William Young, Henry Christian Geyer, Joseph Lamson and his shop, William Mumford, John Stevens and family, and Jonathan and Moses Worster. These are names well-known to anyone versed in this art form.
I was taken by the fact that new motifs in gravestone design could spread through the stonecutter community with such personalized innovations and styles. Further, in chapter 8: "The Icons of Essex," County provided a contrast with another style of cutting faces in stone. This book significantly broadened my view of stonecutting styles in New England. It also provides 50 pages of epitaphs, many with verses. This provided a kind of verbal counterpart to the visual designs.
The first volume of my book focused on Boston, Plymouth County, and Cape Cod. Benes’ study was essential for providing a larger context for my own account of the stonecutters of this locale. He relied on an analysis of over 4000 gravestones in over 100 burial grounds. He prodded the neophyte (like myself at the time) into considering the more symbolic elements of gravestones, including the perception that headstones and footstones represented the headboards and footboards of the beds in which the deceased were “sleeping.”
His book provided a much-needed reminder of the subtle religious symbolism found on all of these old monuments. Plymouth and Barnstable Counties are particularly important for understanding the stonecutters' business practices and design repertoires in this region of Massachusetts.
This initial volume provides detailed accounts (with photographs) of classical, early Boston carvers, as well as the Emmes family of carvers, John Gaud (1693-1750) (who worked in both Boston and Connecticut), Ebenezer Howard (1734-?), and James Wilder (1741-1794) of Lancaster. It is a perfect start for anyone wanting to explore the subject in actual field trips–focusing on its earliest masters. There is also a second volume, which includes a cumulative index for both volumes. Five of the six chapters of Volume II focus on major stonecutters in Groton, Salem, Essex County, and Boston.
I wish Chase and Gabel’s first volume had appeared before my first visit to the area so that I would have been better prepared to examine the work of the early Boston carvers, the Park family carvers, James Ford, and Levy Maxey–all of whom I discovered later. These two books together provide probably the closest thing to a general instructive travel guide to the earliest gravestones of New England–vital for any exploration of this distinctively American art form.
Gravestone Chronicles I includes insightful essays and new scholarship on eighteenth-century New England gravestone carvers and their art. (An every-name, every-place index to both books is included in Volume II.) The authors "There is a wealth of knowledge waiting to be discovered in New England's burying a chronicle of history, art, religious beliefs, military campaigns, family genealogy sometimes tragedy or scandal even humor."
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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