Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Symbolism, tagged cleveland, grave art, ihs, lakeview cemetery, ohio, symbolism on October 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I’m not sure how many times I looked at these monuments before I saw the letters IHS. The overlaid version of the letters is probably more common than the arrangement I’ve shown you before. As I explained then, IHS is an abbreviation for Jesus Christ, made up of the first three letters used to spell the name in Greek.
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Symbolism, tagged cleveland, grave art, lakeview cemetery, ohio, sculpture, symbolism, turtle on October 23, 2011| 1 Comment »
These three turtles are the only use I have seen for the creature in funerary art. Stories in Stone, which has a pretty thorough listing of meanings for funerary art, theorizes that turtles don’t have a strong symbolic meaning in most funerary art. He states they are probably usually decorative rather than symbolic. Still, he continues by stating that turtles certainly could be interpreted in many ways. In this case, I find it interesting that the turtles are supporting a large flower urn, which seems reminiscent of mythologies that place the entire world on the back of a turtle. Why did the Donaldsons choose the turtles? I can’t really say.
