There are some wonderful monuments that feature a symbolic empty chair.
Tag Archives: Laurel Hill Cemetery
Old Mortality
Sir Walter Scott in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Well, why not?
Funerary landscaping
A photo essay on the stages of decay of funerary landscape architecture.
The Kates monument in Laurel Hill
The Kates monument in Laurel Hill gets us to the name of the quarry that contracted several works discussed here.
Trompe l’oeil in Laurel Hill
A wondrous trompe l’oeil effect created by the landscape architect of the Conarroe plot in Laurel Hill.
From cradle to . . . cradle
Emma Hinton’s parents gave her a grave in which to plant flowers. Yet they also adapted this common type specifically to the tender age of her death.
Aspirations
A beautiful female figure modeled by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth turns up in a newly discovered replica.
Egyptian revival delux(or)
A nice Egyptian revival mausoleum at West Laurel Hill with some de-luxor features!
Log-a-palooza!
An obsessive quest by Mr. Lloyd to get every conceivable grave furnishing in the rustic style has left us an astonishing, world-class plot in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
An astounding performance in Laurel Hill
Figure 1. Levi Franklin and Catharine Drinkhouse Smith monument. Detail: sides 1 and 2. Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA. Photo: author. My eye was caught as I was departing Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia by this unorthodox ‘white bronze’ monument (figure 1). It turns out to be an astounding and unexpected form of self-representation by …
Funerary portraits to order
The reader may know that I am looking into American funerary portraits. Searching turns up a fair number of them, but there is always a question of whether portrait statues or busts in the wild were made for the tomb or were repurposed from a domestic setting. It’s therefore time to touch base with theory, …
The artist, the grave, and the sonnet
Figure 1. Augustus Goodyear Heaton. Frontispiece photo from Fancies in Thoughts and Verse (Boston 1904). Public domain. Digitized by Google, in the internet archive. Augustus Goodyear Heaton, a.k.a. Augustus George Heaton, had his middle name legally changed at the age of 78 in 1922. Born in Philadelphia in 1844, he passed much of his career …
The kitchen sink!
If you look, you may find it somewhere in the over-the-top bronze sarcophagus of Benjamin Head Warder in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Warder made a fortune in agricultural machinery, thanks not least to “The Champion” combined reaper and mower. Benjamin Head Warder monument. Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. Benjamin Head Warder …