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Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
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Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
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Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Granite statue from China graces Highland Cemetery |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 19 August 2006 |
By: Bobbi Patterson, Contributing writer
KANSAS- Highland Cemetery, high atop the bluff in the city of Wakefield, now has an extraordinary new granite altar and sculpture of Jesus Christ on the cross, complete with benches which face the statue in one direction and look out over the cemetery in the other.
The area is large enough to accommodate a personal memorial service, a Good Friday service or for someone to sit and meditate as they visit their loved one.
On the front of the altar at the base of the statue is engraved the bible verse from II Timothy:
"I have fought the good fight; I have run the race; I have kept the faith. All there is to come now is the crown of righteousness reserved for me which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day."
A small group of Wakefield citizens who wanted to give something lasting to the city, something that would endure for a long time after everyone alive now is gone, donated the funds for the sculpture.
"I was brought a number of photographs of statues that people had collected, ideas and thoughts, and we finally decided on the basic concept," said Alan Johnson of Mastercarved Memorials in Clay Center.
"I then submitted the concept to two nationally known designers, but unfortunately, one of them died suddenly and the other was inundated with the additional workload, so we were pretty much on our own.
"The thing that served me the best at that point was my engineering background (I worked for Black and Veach in Kansas City before coming here), and the fact that I had previously taken a design course from those very same designers. As a result of the photos I had and the small amount of direction I had gotten from the designer before he died, we drew up a firm concept.
"Then it was a matter of figuring out how to design the individual pieces so they could be assembled in the field. Something that big can't be shipped as a solid block because the freight would be too expensive and it would have required cranes much larger than we have to set it in place."
Johnson submitted the final design to several companies for quotes, and chose a granite broker on the West Coast.
"We selected them because of the materials they use (Pacific gray granite) and because of their price," Johnson said. "Even after we'd submitted detailed drawings of each individual piece, how it was to be made and where the dowel holes were to be located, their price remained the same, so we had our supplier.
"In addition, a representative of this brokerage was scheduled to travel to China, where the piece was to be built, and would have an opportunity to personally oversee much of the detail work."
The statue was actually begun three different times because during the first two attempts, flaws were found in the granite and had to be scrapped.
"We asked that the cross and the figure of Jesus Christ be carved completely out of one block of granite, which to the best of our knowledge has never been done before," Johnson said.
"Normally, they are carved as two separate objects bolted together, which means that over time there is always a danger of the separate pieces pulling apart, of the fasteners rusting, etc. We wanted to do it right."
The huge statue arrived in Clay Center on June 29th, and was carefully uncrated and the chamois covering unwrapped in Mastercarved's production facility across the street from their office.
People from Wakefield came up for the "un-crating," and without exception, everyone was immediately impressed with the quality of the carving that had been done by the Chinese.
One Wakefield woman said, later, that it "looks like Jesus could open His eyes any minute."
Mastercarved drilled and mounted most of the more than 30 dowels (3/8-inch stainless steel rods, six inches long) needed. Then they assembled the altar. A slot had been precut in the top of the altar box through which the 12-foot cross would be lowered to sit on the floor of the altar. Finally, they engraved the front of the altar.
In April, a local contractor had poured the cement footings and the concrete slab on which the statue was finally erected.
"We set the base slab for the altar first and let it sit for about a week before putting the rest of the altar together. After the altar was assembled, we came down the following day and lowered the cross and figure of Christ into place, then sealed up all the joints," Johnson said.
Before it was completely sealed, however, someone suggested putting a time capsule inside the base of the altar.
A capsule containing an issue of the Wakefield Times (with its advertising inserts), a Kansas highway map, a map of Milford Lake, the Clay County Tourism map (which shows every school, cemetery and church that has ever been in Clay County), information from the Wakefield Museum, a brochure on the historic Sts. John and George Episcopal Church, a brochure on the Wakefield Republican Valley Farm Museum, a list of those having provided the funds, and pictures of the cemetery site before the statue's base had been poured, now rests quietly inside the altar base.
"The project was finished on July 21st, the day it finally cooled down from our string of 100+ degree days," Johnson said. "The benches had been shipped at the same time as the statue, but had been pulled for inspection at some port. They arrived on July 17th!"
Mastercarved doweled the seats to the pedestals and the pedestals to the concrete, and it was finished, the culmination of more than a year in the planning and exactly five months and ten days after the order had been placed with the granite company...a gift to the Wakefield community that will last for generations untold.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17044852&BRD=1160&PAG=461&dept_id=190958&rfi=6 |
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