Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Crosses, tagged cleveland, Crosses, grave art, highland park cemetery, ohio, sculpture on July 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »
I was paging through my photos when I realized that I have finally taken enough new photos that I can at least temporarily bring back Friday cross posts. Strangely, I realized that all of my cross photos from my first trip to Highland Park Cemetery were of simple, plain crosses.
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged buffalo, clergy, cross, euphemisms for death, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, ihs, new york, occupation, tombstone tales, wordless wednesday on July 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged buffalo, clergy, euphemisms for death, forest lawn cemetery, new york, occupation on July 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »
This is the first time I have seen “translated” used as a euphemism for death. It communicates a belief in death as simply a step rather than a final thing.
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Symbolism, tagged anchor, astrolabe, buffalo, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, new york, sculpture, symbolism, tombstone tales on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Walter Norton’s monument doesn’t state his occupation, but I’m going to guess that he was a sailor, possibly specifically a captain or navigator, since he has both an anchor and an astrolabe on his monument.
Posted in Cemetery mysteries, Cemetery Sculpture, Statues, tagged cincinnati, grave art, ohio, sculpture, spring grove cemetery, statues, unsolved on July 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »
I don’t know any more about this monument than what is engraved on the stone. Davis Lawler erected it in memory of his parents – why a Sphinx made an appropriate monument to them, I don’t know. But then, that’s kind of appropriate, isn’t it?
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, tagged cincinnati, grave art, ohio, sarcophagus, sarcophagus tomb, sculpture, spring grove cemetery, tomb types on July 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »
It’s been a while since I posted photos of sarcophagus tombs. Sarcophagus tombs are those that look like a coffin or similar container for holding a body but do not. The deceased are generally interred in the nearby ground.
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged buffalo, forest lawn cemetery, history, new york, occupation, tombstone tales, war of 1812, wordless wednesday on July 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleveland, fraternal organization, freemasons, grave arts, harvard grove cemetery, highland park cemetery, ohio, sculpture, shaker heights, square and compass, symbols on July 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »
The most common fraternal symbol you will find in cemeteries is that of the Freemasons. You can find it on tombstones dating from the Revolutionary War era to ones that were set in the last year. The masonic symbol is a architect’s set of compasses and a square, with or without a G in the space created in the center, as I’ve shown on the Gammon stone at Highland Park Cemetery in Shaker Heights.
These monuments are in Harvard Grove Cemetery.
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged cincinnati, grave art, ohio, oxidation, sculpture, spring grove cemetery, statues, verdigris on July 16, 2012| 1 Comment »
If you walk around enough cemeteries, you’ll notice that many statues and monuments have metal that has taken on a distinctive blue-green hue, just like the Statue of Liberty. If you’re like me, you learned about why this happens in some middle school science class and then promptly forgot. So if you already know this answer, you can skip the rest of this paragraph and just look at the pretty pictures. But for those of you who pushed out this science knowledge to have more room to remember the names of all the Muppets and the entire script of The Princess Bride, stay with me. The metal monuments and statues and plaques that go green because the alloys they are made of contain copper. When copper is exposed to water, it oxidizes and forms a layer that actually protects the metal underneath from degrading further. The patina and color are called verdigris.
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, tagged cincinnati, grave art, ohio, oxidation, rust, sculpture, spring grove cemetery, symbolism, wreath on July 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A Grave Concern 