• Main Page • Background on Monument Imagery • Design and Manufacture of Monuments • Types of Stones • Writing with Pictures • References •

Design and Manufacture of Monuments

Pre-mechanization and Pre-Computerization (17th-19th Centuries)

The designer would handdraw the chosen image and words on stencil paper.
The selection was limited to what the designer could easily draw or trace and to what the stone-worker (often one and the same person) could carve.
The stencil would be cut-out by hand and laid on the stone and the image would be traced.
Following the markings traced on the stone, the stone-worker would use chisels and hammers to shape, cut, and carve by hand.
These were time-intensive tasks and the more complicated the design the higher the price by a substantial amount.

In the 1800's mass-produced metal stencils and letter die-casts made it easier for designers to trace images and letters. However, customers' selections would often be limited to the stencils the monument company had available unless the company employed a designer who could draw or would hire an artist, one who was knowledgeable of what images could successfully be handcut into stone.

Mechanization, but Pre-Computerization

The Technology Club

The development of air hammers and chisels at the start of the 20th-century speeded up the cutting process, but images and letters still had to be handdrawn on the stone.
With the advent of electric enlargers (machines that used light and mirrors to redirect images),designers had the option of tracing more images, but the image still had to be converted into dimensions that would work with stone and traced onto the stone--processes that were all done by hand.
Then in the 1930's (or thereabout) sandblasting machines were invented. By literally blasting a special sand mixture at the rock, these machines eliminated some of the handcutting techniques, but special carvings or ones with especially fine detail still needed to be done by hand. Also, until the 1960's or so, the sandblasting machines had to be held by hand, which meant that a person (usually a man) had "to hold a sandblast nozzle in front of a stone for 20-40 minutes, steady and on the level," a feat that took a great deal of "skill and endurance" (L.A. Herstead 11/16/2000).
The automation of the sandblasting machines helped to speed up the process because, as Lou Ann Herstead explained, they "freed a man up to continue working on something else and improved the quality of the sandblasting [by enabling a greater] uniformity of pressure because the same speed, direction, and distance from the stone is maintained" (11/26/2000).
Because the sandblasting machines would wear away any unexposed rock surface, a means to protect uncut areas had to be devised, so rubber stencils were poured onto the stone. According to Lew Herstead, the process initially went like this: "The stone had to be perfectly level and a border put around the area to be covered. The stencil was melted in a pot with sufficient water to make it pourable, and this would be poured onto the stone to a proper thickness of 3/16 and allowed to cool overnight. . . The next morning the cutter would draw the carving and lettering directly on the poured stencil and then proceed to cut out the work with a type of knife we call a stencil knife" (11/16/2000).
Later the stencil came in rubberized sheets that were glued onto the stone, but the process of having to cut the stencil by hand before the sandblasting could begin was the same well into the 1960's.
Cutting stencil by hand was an incredibly time-consuming task. In one of its promotional packets entitled "The quarrying and manufacturing process" (1978), Elberton Granite, one of the largest quarries and monument producers in the United States, explained stencil cutting as a "tedious task" that required a person to spend hours running a "razor sharp knife along the tiny lines made by the carbon reproduction" pressed against the rubberized stencil (p. 6).

Computerization (mid-1980's to present)

Computers have not changed the basic process of designing monuments (images and fonts still need to be chosen, the layout planned and applied to stone, the stone surface cut and finished for the cemetery), but they have transformed the ease and speed by which that process is done.
With available clip art, the speed of scanning technology, and the monument design programs that enable drawing (and redrawing) of micro-precise images right on the computer, almost any image a person would like put on a monument can be done.
Because changes can easily be made, designers can redesign sites without the tedious process of erasing and redrawing. With a click of a button images can be deleted, enlarged, manipulated in ways not easily possible with paper-based designing.
Besides making designing (at least the layout, not the conceptual knowledge) easier. Computerization led to computer stencil cutters, machines that look like giant computer printers, except instead of laying ink on paper, they use blades to cut rubber sheets as they scroll through. The process while not as fast as a paper printer, is certainly a lot faster than the old way of cutting stencil. To cut a rubber stencil that would have taken a person four hours to cut (assuming that he or she was a good and experienced cutter who makes no mistakes) the computerized stencil cutter can do in one hour. This substantially reduces the cost of the monument because after spending about fifteen minutes setting up the computerized stencil cutter, the designer can just hit a computer key and go onto another task.
Because the cost of design is less and because the cost of manufacturing is less, monuments today--allowing for inflation--cost substantially less than they used to (unless, as L.A. Herstead explains, "there is a monopoly of the service because the cemetery, funeral home, monument company, and vault company are all owned by the same large funeral corporation," in which case the cost can still be quite high). On average though, the costs are lower which means that people can afford to put more images on stones. L.A. Herstead estimates that when she joined her family's business full-time in the that maybe 2% of the monuments that produced had pictures on them. Now she says it's over 40% and increasing every year.