Written in stone

From epitaphs to large-scale monuments, letter carvers can elevate even the most straightforward inscription to an elaborate work of art

- Catriona Gray

FEW pastimes are more poignant than wandering around a country churchyard and reading the old gravestones. Whether blooming with moss and lichen or neatly scrubbed and tended, they conjure up a sense of past lives —and the passing of time—more solidly than any history book. The weight and presence of stone, which is durable enough to weather the centuries, has long been used to commemorate and memorialise, whether in the public sphere, to celebrate great achievements and seismic events, or in the private one, to create a last tribute to a loved one or to mark a meaningful occasion.

The practice of carving in stone is as old as humanity itself, appearing across different ancient civilisations and cultures. Although the earliest examples of stone carving are pictures or three-dimensional objects, it’s also through this medium that the first iterations of written communication were recorded and preserved, from the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians to the ogham stones used by the Celts. However, it was the Romans who left the biggest legacy when it comes to lettering in stone, both in terms of our alphabet and how the letters are drawn. Early Roman examples were carved in sans serif fonts, following the Greek style, although later pieces favoured serif styles—the lettering at the base of Trajan’s Column in Rome is a particularly good example of the latter and is still used as a reference point by today’s practitioners.