A visit back to Saint Marys

I have looked around on line...

and I found someone who still does stone carving

http://www.stonecarver.com/Garden-Sculpture.html

Not everything is people

So far I have shown images of people, male, female, and child but the artisans work was not restricted to just people. Take a look at the photo below, it was taken at Stonington Borough, Stonington Ct..
At first many disregard it, "It's a coffin with a blanket over it" is what one Friend of mine said. Look at the edge of the lid, the ivy, look at thefabric, the folds, the way it lays hanging over the edge.  Now..look at the rope, the tassel hanging from the end, but...take a close look  at  the  rope.

Take a CLOSE look at the rope



It not only has the spirals of a length of rope, it has the threads. This has always led me to wonder, what if you are almost done, and you broke a piece off. What do you do?



Grave stone engravings

When I first gained interest in taking photos of "Cemetery art" I had not given much thought past the statues. But then I started looking at headstones and the art work involved there. Looking at the headstones you start to read them. On the older stones you occasionally found corrections, a crossed off letter with the correct letter carved above the word with a line showing where the letter should go. Sometimes entire words were forgotten and added with a line locator. Occasionally you would find a stone where the engraver ran out of room and ran the word upward in the margin, or abbreviated a word that normally wasn't abbreviated.

But besides the errors, miss-spellings and omissions, the messages themselves can be inspiring, funny, in-sightful, or informative.

There is a saying on many stones that seems to have been very popular in the 17 and 1800s. the first time I came across it was near Saunderstown in the Kingston RI area. On a very narrow road off route 1 or 1a we came across a church on top of a hill. A very secluded area, a thin tall white church, behind it was a cemetery with plain stones as markers, (often used for slaves and native Americans). Across the narrow lane was a stone wall with a wrought iron gate leading to a cemetery. the entire area was over grown with briers, brush, and trees. The entire are looked like something out of the mind of that New England horror novelist, Stephen King.
I climbed over the stone wall pulled some briers aside to get access, some of the headstones were partially inside trees which had grown up and absorbed them, all the stones were partially covered with years of accumulated ground litter. The years had composted the leaves and twigs countless times and the soil had built up six to eight inches. Here I found a stone of a young woman, a wife, a mother, as I read down the stone I noticed at the bottom there was a saying, it read,

"You must see, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I" 

Below that there was another line, it was covered with only the tops of the letters visible, so I kneeled down on the grave, reached in the dirt and started digging it out, the dirt was a mass of tiny to thin roots, like an intricate web. I pulled the roots out, I dug out the dirt, I rubbed the dirt out of the letters.
Now, picture yourself kneeling on a grave, with your hands resting in its earth and you read...

"As I am now, So must you be, prepare for Death and follow me".

This was kind of an awakening as to how they handled life and death in the more difficult times of our past, Death was part of life, something to expect, something you had to live your life for so you were prepared to meet your maker, stand in front of him, and be judged.

I would find this saying and other related sentiments many times on many stones later on.



klay

More works from the New London Ct. Saint Marys Cemetery.

The softer the original stone, the softer the details become, rain,wind, and pollution take their toll

Sometime even the lichen adds accent, as it fills folds and crevices bringing out the details of the work

Not all the works are large, here two young angels wrap a cross with ivy on this child's grave.

Some works are not statues at all, but works carved into the flat surface of the stone look at the amount of detail in this work.An angel with a cross, wings spread, leaves above the figure and it grasps flowers with its other hand.

Some works are actually beautiful in their simplicity

Here the artist combined stone carving with a photo of the deceased, making for a strong feeling of despair and loss.Actually quite striking.

Ye Antientist Burial Ground, New London, Ct.

While not as "Grand" as the giant statuary that would follow later, the work that went into the stones in this Cemetery are none the less beautiful. The use of sandstone for the stones led to the stones being repaired at a later date, and even those have suffered the  ravages of time. This Cemetery is one of the oldest in New England.

For more information on this area visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Antientist_Burial_Ground,_New_London

klay

Saint Marys Cemetary, New London, Connecticut

The stone work of days gone by was outstanding, capturing the image of "Man" at his (or her) best. Emotion carved into stone, whether it be the Glory of the here-after, the In-consolable grief of a lost loved one, the pain of the loss of a child, or the promise of better things to come. The artisan brought this out of a piece of inanimate stone, sometimes leaving the beholder to wonder if it is actually a carving or the living turned to stone in their grief. Truthfully the wealthy could afford to have the more wondrous works done, but  even the carvings on simple stones was art in itself the likes of which are not found today, mostly due to the extreme cost of all things "Art".