Flower Engraving Black Granite Blank Tombstone

Stone tombstones, stone monuments, stone headstones, stone gravestones.

Unlike the work of most stonemasons, the work of the monumental mason is of small size, often just a small slab of stone, but generally with a highly detailed finish. Generally gravestones are highly polished with detailed engraving of text and symbols. Some memorials are more elaborate and may involve the sculpture of symbols associated with death, such as angels, hands joined in prayer, and vases of flowers. Some specially-made stones feature artistic lettering by letter cutters.

By the beginning of the twentieth century the craft had deteriorated to the point that Lawrence Weaver felt compelled to write, “To-day many of the persons who are curiously called ‘monumental masons’ bring to their task neither educated taste nor the knowledge of good historical examples; they are often, moreover, incompetent in their craftmanship. The more important shops which purvey marble monuments are, if anything, rather worse, for they stereotype bad designs, which are the more offensive because more ambitious and costly. The clerical tailors who sell most of the engraved brasses have mainly succeeded in making that form of memorial the most dreary. All three sources of supply have added a new terror to death.”